Elections

SEATTLE — The bloom of the Black Lives Matter signs. That is what my son and I saw as we jogged through our mostly white neighborhood. Everywhere we looked, we could see what felt like change.The signs were on front lawns, attached to trees, displayed in windows, stapled to telephone poles.There was also a flag that displayed a clenched fist, Black and bold. A fence with huge letters that spelled a single word: Ally. A nearby building was painted with the name George Floyd.It was summer, hot and dry in our Seattle neighborhood, where I am among the few Black homeowners — and one of the few Black joggers — in a community of roughly 40,000 not far from downtown.Though this is a place that leans left politically, visible displays of support for Black human rights have been scarce. But then Floyd died in Minneapolis after a white police officer pinned him to the ground, knee upon neck. As the country heaved in protest over racism that stretched back four centuries, something changed where we live — on the surface, at least.Like Black joggers across the country, we saw the burst of supportive flags, placards and murals. They gave some comfort to a guy like me, unsure and anxious about our place in a community we enjoy. I could not stop wondering what it all meant.“Never in a million years would I have thought we’d see this,” I told my son as we finished up a three-miler one day. “Never.”He replied with the cleareyed directness of a 9-year-old. “But Dad, where were all those signs before? It’s crazy that it took someone dying to have this happen.”From the start of the coronavirus pandemic, we had made a habit of running, masked-up, down the middle of residential streets in the late afternoons. It became our way to bond.But then in May I saw the video of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black runner, as he was shot to death weeks earlier after being confronted by two white men in coastal Georgia.I crumpled into a ball on my couch and cried.A few days later, my son started our run by asking if we could take his favorite route. It winds through the immaculately manicured neighborhoods nearby. They felt even more segregated. Running there now felt like being in a fishbowl, way too out in the open, way too much as if we were objects being watched.No, I told him.“Some other time, I promise.” I just couldn’t bear it.He understood.Make no mistake, running while Black on the streets of Seattle does not feel the same as it does in a place like St. Louis, where I jogged last year on a work trip and sensed immediately that the racial tension was thicker and more obvious. Nor is it like pounding the footpaths of Fayetteville, N.C., where Sonoyia Largent leads a growing chapter of a nationwide support group called Black Girls Run. When we talked last week, Largent spoke of feeling racism in her community growing so close to a boil that she has considered buying a gun small enough to keep in her training gear.I don’t feel that worried, but we live in America, and my son and I are now part of a movement. The number of Black recreational joggers has surged during the pandemic, according to Largent and several other running organizers from across the country. One called it a boom. All spoke of a paradox. We get out there for health, a sense of freedom and joy, even as a tribute to Arbery — to claim our unbowed dignity in full view. But we do so warily.For me, that caution comes from personal history. My parents helped integrate the part of the city where I live, starting in the 1950s. They raised four sons here. We had many friends. And plenty of neighbors eager to show their hate. During my grade school years in the 1970s, racial epithets were regularly directed my way. I always had to be ready to fight.The city is different now. Far wealthier, far less provincial. Outward racism is less common.But Seattle remains one of the whitest major cities in the country, and it is in a region long rife with white supremacists.So as I run, I keep in mind the present and do not forget the past. I remain on guard, scanning each street, aware of every person on every corner and front porch. All it takes is one 911 call from someone who thinks I’m stalking the neighborhood, and suddenly I could be surrounded by police. Then what?It is not just people I worry about. As many Black runners can attest, objects become potent symbols.My antenna rises when I see a pickup truck that has a bumper sticker with the words “N.R.A.,” “Don’t Tread on Me” or “Trump 2020.”I spent enough time as a city reporter to understand that policing done right is an honorable profession, but I sprint as fast as possible by the house with the Blue Lives Matter flag, which I view as a retort to the quest for Black justice.What about the suddenly ubiquitous Black Lives Matters signs? They cause mixed emotions. As I spoke with runners from across the country, it was clear I was not alone.“We’ve got to give white people some credit,” said Maria B. Stanfield, a clinical psychologist and avid runner in the Detroit area. “I would not minimize it. They didn’t have to put up the signs.”I agree. I’d rather see the outward support than nothing at all.But how truly authentic are such displays? Flying a flag is excellent, but what does it mean for real change?“If I’m injured and need help, and I show up at the front door of one of those houses with the signs, will they call the cops or give me assistance?” said Erik McDuffie, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Illinois who hopes to compete in a marathon once the pandemic ends.I can’t see myself ever running a marathon, but I can imagine that for my son. Eventually, I fulfilled the promise I made, and we returned to his favorite route.We kept going back. In August, September and then October. Kept slogging up and down the long blocks that string across our community.On a recent outing, we pushed through rain and gusty winds, well past sundown. I noticed how the show of support had changed me. I felt safer, as free as I’ve felt on any run.I noticed something else. The words “George Floyd” on that nearby building had been painted over. The flags were worn. Some of the signs either were gone from front yards or looked as if they were about to blow off their moorings.I had to wonder: When the weather is better next spring, will the bloom come again? More

A friend was all worked up about the possibility of Trump 2024.“I can’t go through this again!” she cried. But what I heard was that she couldn’t stop going through this. Her contempt for Donald Trump is too finely honed at this point, too essential a part of her psyche. Who would she be — conversationally, politically — without it?Another friend sent me an email in which he’d worked out the economics of a web-only Trump news channel of the kind that Trump may — or may not — start. With minimal investment, Trump could rake in millions and millions!We were supposed to be breathing a huge sigh of relief about Joe Biden’s victory. But instead he was finding a fresh source of outrage about Trump.And here I am writing about Trump — again. It’s a tic, not one I’m proud of. But I’m surrendering to it now to acknowledge that I can’t continue doing so. None of us can.I’m not talking just about journalists. An obsession with Trump as the brute of all evil extends far beyond us. It has been an animating, organizing principle for the Democratic Party, a bond among civic-minded people of otherwise divergent persuasions and a pillar of many Americans’ political identity. It turned his rise and reign into an all-consuming international soap opera with ratings not just through the roof but also through the stratosphere. No public figure in my lifetime has made such a monopolizing claim on our attention, even our souls.On Jan. 20 — praise be! — his presidency will be over. But his hold on us may not end as quickly and cleanly. And his departure from the White House will be more disorienting than some of us realize, posing its own challenges: for Democrats, for news organizations, for anyone who has grown accustomed over these past four years to an apocalyptic churn of events and emotions.“Donald Trump is still coursing through your veins, isn’t he?” asked John Harris in a column in Politico published on Tuesday, likening him to an addiction from which there must be a meticulously plotted recovery.Actually, Democratic lawmakers seem to be moving on from him — and revealing, in the process, what a potent glue he was. He united the party’s left and center by giving them the same top priority: Dump Trump. No sooner was he dumped than the glue dissolved.Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York progressive, and Conor Lamb, a Pennsylvania moderate, began trading recriminations about where Democrats went right, where they went wrong and where they should go from here. So did Representatives Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia moderate, and Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan progressive.In a column published in The Times on Monday evening, my colleague Michelle Goldberg implored Democrats to tone it down and keep it together. In a column published on Wednesday morning, my colleague Thomas Edsall asked whether they could. This one-two punch wasn’t overkill. It was a 20-20 glimpse of life beyond 2020.Policy differences between progressives and moderates may be solved by Mitch McConnell: If Republicans win at least one of the two runoffs in Georgia on Jan. 5 and hold on to their Senate majority, McConnell, as the majority leader, will be the grim reaper of any transformative legislation.But that still leaves room for arguments about the issues that Democrats should emphasize and the tone that they should strike for the 2022 midterms. Especially with Trump out of office, those disputes could be heated.And there will be plenty of political friction to go around. Up until Nov. 3, Never Trump Republicans were heroes to many Democrats — ultimate proof that the ruler was rotten. But that love affair can’t survive Trump’s defeat, a reality evident in a few progressives’ fierce attacks on the Lincoln Project — an anti-Trump super PAC founded by Republicans — since Election Day.And what happens to those Republicans? The more than 73 million ballots cast for Trump in 2020 — giving him about 47 percent of the popular vote, up from 46 percent four years ago — prove that the party didn’t come around to them and isn’t about to cue up Peaches and Herb’s “Reunited.” They’re paradigmatic, emblematic: When you’ve shaped yourself almost entirely in opposition to someone who has been vanquished, are you free or formless?The test for the mainstream media is our ability to turn away from Trump even if he remains a potent audience draw. It’s not certain that he will be: When Trump and Biden appeared at rival town halls on the same night in October, Biden drew more television viewers. And the much-discussed “Trump bump” that cable news channels and newspapers experienced in and right after 2016 faded over time.But there’s no doubt that chronicling and commenting on how bad Trump is for democracy has been good for business. It also made virtuous sense: His station and power justified coverage of every tweet and bleat. His attempt to steal the election demands exactly the scrutiny it’s getting, as does the assent of his base and most of his fellow Republicans.The situation, however, will soon grow complicated. Unlike his more dignified predecessors, he won’t maintain a relatively low post-presidency profile; he’ll keep whipping up passions on the right. And there will surely be a laudable journalistic excavation of Trump administration misdeeds that he and his aides successfully buried. Suffice it to say that Trump won’t exit the news.But he also won’t be nearly as relevant as he is now, and that compels news organizations to ratchet down his presence in a huge way, potentially turning our backs on easy stories that would have been raptly consumed by readers and viewers still consumed by their disgust with him. I worry about our resolve.“With Biden you’re not going to have these wild rallies,” Jim VandeHei, a co-founder of Axios, told Bloomberg recently. “You’re going to have speeches on budget reconciliation. I don’t think that’s going to light people’s hearts afire.” He added that “there’s no way you’re not going to see lower cable ratings and some reduction in traffic to websites.”I also worry that in the wake of Trump’s presidency, which both reflected and intensified the furious pitch of American politics, melodrama may be the new normal. I worry that while Americans are exhausted by it, we’re also habituated to it; that we’ll manufacture it where it doesn’t exist; that hearings in a Republican-controlled Senate will turn Hunter Biden into the new Benghazi; and that we’ll hear no less from the likes of Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani next year than we did this one, because no reality show would cast off cast members that juicy.I worry that my worry is part of the problem — that it’s not so much epiphany as muscle memory. It has gotten a hell of a workout since 2016.I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni). More

Donald Trump Jr, the president’s son who has tested positive for the coronavirus, has said he will pass the time in isolation battling with the virus by cleaning his collection of guns.
Trump Jr is now the fourth member of the Trump family to have become infected with Covid. The president, the first lady and their son, Barron, have recovered from the virus, as has Trump Jr’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle.
In a video posted to his Instagram account, Trump Jr breezily announced: “Apparently I got the rona.” He then went on to say he had no symptoms of the virus but would stay indoors out of an abundance of caution.
He asked his supporters for their book and Netflix recommendation before adding: “I may have a couple days of solo time and there’s only so many guns I can clean before that gets bored.”
Trump Jr, like his father as president, has been frequently criticized for downplaying the severity of the pandemic as it killed more than 250,000 Americans. In October Trump Jr told Fox News that critics of the Trump administration’s widely slammed approach to the pandemic are “truly morons” and said Covid-19 deaths in America are “almost nothing”.
Trump Jr is believed to have political ambitions beyond being just his father’s son and has successfully courted popularity with the Republican party’s conservative base, carefully cultivating an outdoorsy and hunting popular image. More

Donald Trump is using the dying embers of his US presidency to hastily push through a procession of environmental protection rollbacks that critics claim will cement his legacy as an unusually destructive force against the natural world.Trump has yet to acknowledge his election loss to president-elect Joe Biden but his administration has been busily finishing off a cavalcade of regulatory moves to lock in more oil and gas drilling, loosened protections for wildlife and lax air pollution standards before the Democrat enters the White House on 20 January.Trump’s interior department is hastily auctioning off drilling rights to America’s last large untouched wilderness, the sprawling Arctic National Wildlife Refuge found in the tundra of northern Alaska. The refuge, home to polar bears, caribou and 200 species of birds, has been off limits to fossil fuel companies for decades but the Trump administration is keen to give out leases to extract the billions of barrels of oil believed to be in the area’s coastal region.The leases could result in the release of vast quantities of carbon emissions as well as upend the long-held lifestyle of the local Gwich’in tribe, which depends upon the migratory caribou for sustenance. Several major banks, fiercely lobbied by the Gwich’in and conservationists, have refused to finance drilling in the refuge but industry groups have expressed optimism that the area will be carved open. More

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Friday announced new staff appointments and met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, maintaining his focus on the economy and the coronavirus pandemic while ignoring President Trump’s continued efforts to subvert the election results.The Democratic leaders gathered in Wilmington, Del., for their first in-person meeting since the election to “discuss their shared priorities to provide immediate help to struggling working families and small businesses,” they said in a joint statement.In a brief photo opportunity with reporters, Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were seated with Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer at a large rectangular table, all wearing masks and distanced several feet from one another.“In my Oval Office, me casa, you casa,” Mr. Biden joked, drawing chuckles from the others. “I hope we’re going to spend a lot of time together.”Friday was Mr. Biden’s 78th birthday, and Ms. Pelosi gave the president-elect a white orchid in celebration, according to an aide.None of the Democrats said anything more of substance to reporters, but in a joint statement afterward they said they “agreed that Congress needed to pass a bipartisan emergency aid package in the lame duck session,” including money to fight the coronavirus and to support struggling families, businesses and state and local governments.Mr. Biden had discussed his agenda for the first 100 days of his presidency, including to “contain” the coronavirus and restore the economy, in what the statement called “the American people’s mandate for action.”The statement made no reference to Mr. Trump’s false claims about the election, a day after Mr. Biden called them “totally irresponsible.” Jen Psaki and Yohannes Abraham, speaking for the Biden-Harris transition, were measured on the subject during a briefing for reporters, saying that they were “moving full speed ahead” but avoiding provocative language that would escalate tensions.The message of discipline appeared in keeping with the Biden campaign’s winning strategy of declining to engage with Mr. Trump’s theatrics and presenting the president-elect as a steady figure focused on the pandemic.But underscoring the strange limbo Mr. Trump has created, Mr. Biden on Friday posted on Twitter a plea for private donations to fund his transition activities. “Here’s the deal: Because President Trump refuses to concede and is delaying the transition, we have to fund it ourselves and need your help,” he wrote. Clicking the link leads to a form hosted by ActBlue, a Democratic network, which suggests donations of $15 to $5,000, though users can give any amount.Ms. Psaki and Mr. Abraham reiterated calls for the head of the General Services Administration, Emily W. Murphy, to approve paperwork that would begin an official presidential transition and provide Mr. Biden and his staff members with access to federal resources, data and personnel.“This isn’t a game,” Mr. Abraham said, noting that a growing number of business groups and leaders, such as the heads of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, had recently called for the transition process to begin.Asked whether the Biden team has had contact with Trump administration officials, as some reports have indicated, Ms. Psaki said, “We certainly would love to have that engagement.”The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesUpdated Nov. 20, 2020, 6:53 p.m. ETGeorgia’s governor certifies presidential electors for Biden.Donald Trump Jr. tests positive for coronavirus. He has been isolating since Monday.Mark Meadows says he won’t run for Senate in North Carolina in 2022.But, she added, the transition team “has been very careful, of course, about following those rules and guidelines, and we’ll have to abide by that until ascertainment happens.”Ascertainment is the term for when the General Services Administration concludes that the election has produced a winner and a transition can begin.Mr. Biden has spoken repeatedly in recent days about the urgent need for Congress to agree on a new stimulus spending package, saying that Senate Republicans should drop their opposition to a measure that House Democrats passed last month. He has made no public suggestion that Democrats should change their position and offer new compromise legislation.Ms. Psaki said that Mr. Biden had also spoken with “elected officials from both sides of the aisle.” When asked whether that included congressional Republicans, whom Mr. Biden has said he hopes will break ranks to challenge Mr. Trump’s election claims and compromise on stimulus spending, she did not offer more specifics.Mr. Biden also announced four more appointments to his White House staff.Catherine M. Russell will be the director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. During the Obama administration, Ms. Russell served as the chief of staff to Jill Biden, then the second lady, and was U.S. ambassador for global women’s issues at the State Department. She is married to former President Barack Obama’s former national security adviser, Tom Donilon, who is the brother of Mr. Biden’s chief political strategist, Mike Donilon, and who may also land a big administration job.Taking over the White House Office of Legislative Affairs will be Louisa Terrell, a former special assistant for legislative affairs to Mr. Obama and a former Capitol Hill aide whose jobs included chief of staff to Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey.The policy director for Ms. Biden will be Mala Adiga, a lawyer who served in a similar role in the Biden-Harris campaign and handled women’s and human rights issues at the State Department and National Security Council under Mr. Obama.The White House’s social secretary will be Carlos Elizondo, who was the social secretary to the Bidens during the Obama administration and the first Hispanic American to hold that job. The position involves planning and managing official White House events, including state dinners.Transition officials offered no specifics about when the team might announce further personnel appointments, including Mr. Biden’s first cabinet nominees.Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting. More

For more than a week, a plain-spoken former federal prosecutor named Sidney Powell made the rounds on right-wing talk radio and cable news, facing little pushback as she laid out a conspiracy theory that Venezuela, Cuba and other “communist” interests had used a secret algorithm to hack into voting machines and steal millions of votes from President Trump.She spoke mostly uninterrupted for nearly 20 minutes on Monday on the “Rush Limbaugh Show,” the No. 1 program on talk radio. Hosts like Mark Levin, who has the fourth-largest talk radio audience, and Lou Dobbs of Fox Business praised her patriotism and courage.So it came as most unwelcome news to the president’s defenders when Tucker Carlson, host of an 8 p.m. Fox News show and a confidant of Mr. Trump, dissected Ms. Powell’s claims as unreliable and unproven.“What Powell was describing would amount to the single greatest crime in American history,” Mr. Carlson said on Thursday night, his voice ringing with incredulity in a 10-minute monologue at the top of his show. “Millions of votes stolen in a day. Democracy destroyed. The end of our centuries-old system of government.” But, he said, when he invited Ms. Powell on his show to share her evidence, she became “angry and told us to stop contacting her.”The response was immediate, and hostile. The president’s allies in conservative media and their legions of devoted Trump fans quickly closed ranks behind Ms. Powell and her case on behalf of the president, accusing the Fox host of betrayal.“How quickly we turn on our own,” said Bo Snerdley, Mr. Limbaugh’s producer, in a Twitter post that was indicative of the backlash against Mr. Carlson. “Where is the ‘evidence’ the election was fair?”The backlash against Mr. Carlson and Fox for daring to exert even a moment of independence underscores how little willingness exists among Republicans to challenge the president and his false narrative about the election he insists was stolen. Among conservative media voices and outlets, there’s generally not just a lack of willingness — they have proved this month to be Mr. Trump’s most reflexive defenders.For months before the election, as Mr. Trump spread disinformation about the reliability of mail-in ballots, Republicans largely avoided contradicting him and insisted that his concerns about fraud were not entirely unreasonable. And in the weeks since election night, when Mr. Trump falsely declared himself the winner and then refused to accept President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, the acknowledgments that the race is settled have come mostly from former officials like President George W. Bush, or from a few current office holders, like Senator Mitt Romney, who have not been afraid to air their differences with Mr. Trump.The same fear that grips elected Republicans — getting on the wrong side of voters who adore Mr. Trump but have little affection for the Republican Party — has kept conservative media largely in line. And that has created a right-wing media bubble that has grown increasingly disconnected from the most basic facts about American government in recent weeks, including who will be inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, 2021.In the hours after Mr. Carlson’s monologue, word of which spread quickly across social media, Mr. Trump’s supporters not only went after Mr. Carlson but also Fox News. The network has become a source of particular frustration with many on the right after taking a more skeptical view of Mr. Trump’s claims about voter fraud and refusing to reconsider its call on election night that Mr. Biden would win Arizona.That decision, which proved correct, deeply angered the president and led him to start promoting some of Fox’s smaller competitors on cable like Newsmax and One America News Network as more suitable alternatives for his large and loyal following.Roosh Valizadeh, a writer and podcast host who supports the president, summed up the anger aimed at Fox by many on the right, saying, “As long as Tucker Carlson works for Fox News, he can’t be fully trusted.”All week on networks like Newsmax and OANN and talk radio programs, the president’s supporters have been given a steady diet of interviews with Trump allies, campaign officials and news stories that promote allegations of fraud with little or no context.One lawyer who is assisting the Trump campaign in its efforts, Lin Wood, went unquestioned this week on Mr. Levin’s show when he made the fantastical claim that Mr. Trump had won the election with 70 percent of the vote. A story that OANN broadcast on Friday afternoon falsely declared, “The state of Michigan is back in play,” giving credence to Mr. Trump’s extraordinary but almost certainly unsuccessful efforts to delay certification of the vote in Detroit.Republican officials have remained mostly measured and muted in their response, even after the conspiratorial and unsubstantiated claims floated by Ms. Powell, Rudolph W. Giuliani and other members of Mr. Trump’s legal team at a news conference on Thursday. Republicans like Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who said that Ms. Powell’s accusations were “absolutely outrageous,” were the exception.Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review and sometimes critic of the president who called his refusal to concede “absurd and sophomoric,” said that whether it was a Republican politician or a talk-show host, breaking the will that many Trump supporters have to believe he is the rightful winner was extremely difficult.“They want it to be true,” Mr. Lowry said. “On top of that, there’s an enormous credibility gap and radical distrust of other sources of information. And that’s compounded by the fact that the president has no standards and is surrounded by these clownish people who will say anything. It’s a toxic stew.”Mr. Lowry added that he thought Mr. Carlson’s words were “admirable” and had told the Fox host so himself. “It’s one thing for people who’ve been opposed to Trump all along, or mixed, to say something like that,” Mr. Lowry said. “It’s another thing for a leader of the populist wing of the conservative movement to call it out.”A question for conservative media that are more independent of Mr. Trump is how much of the market the unabashedly pro-Trump media dominates in the future. Some scholars said they expected that audience to be substantial.“Drudge and Fox can try to pull back from the abyss,” said Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard Law School who studies conservative media. “But the audience is going to get what it wants and reward those who give it to them.”Mr. Carlson is no ordinary Trump critic. He has been one of the president’s most aggressive defenders in prime time, especially when it came to standing up for Mr. Trump as he attacked African-American politicians, athletes and the racial justice activists in the Black Lives Matter movement. He has also generally bought into the disproved notion that voter fraud is a widespread problem — a popular position with Mr. Trump and on Mr. Carlson’s network.He has not been shy in criticizing aspects of the president’s policies he disagrees with, whether the bombing raid in Iraq that killed Iran’s top general, Qassim Suleimani, or Mr. Trump’s failure to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously when it started spreading last winter. But he has never gone out on a limb like this, with the president and his followers so besieged.Mr. Carlson, no doubt aware that many in his audience, including possibly the president himself, would not like what they were hearing, walked a fine line on Thursday night. He insisted that he and his producers “took Sidney Powell seriously,” and that he had invited her on the show to present her evidence.He also tried to reassure his audience that he was on their side after all, explaining how he always kept an open mind about alleged cover-ups like the one Ms. Powell has promoted. “We don’t dismiss anything,” he said. “We literally do U.F.O. segments.” More

In a chaotic effort to overturn the election results, President Trump and lawyers representing his campaign have spent weeks claiming without convincing proof that rampant voter fraud corrupted vote tallies in many battleground states.But their lawsuits challenging the outcome have repeatedly broken down because of defective filings, sloppy paperwork, dubious claims by witnesses and lawyers who have admitted in court that they were not alleging fraud.Here are some of the more embarrassing moments.ArizonaDays after the election, lawyers for the Trump campaign brought a lawsuit in Maricopa County claiming, in part, that some number of Republican voters used Sharpies to mark their ballots, rendering them unreadable by voting machines and leading to uncounted votes.The complaint also included affidavits from several voters and poll watchers who said that poll workers had capitalized on the confusion to nullify votes for Mr. Trump.But in a hearing on Nov. 12, Kory Langhofer, a lawyer for the Trump campaign, conceded that the complaint was not based on evidence of voter fraud but rather on a “limited number of cases” of “good-faith errors” in the count.“This is not a fraud case,” Mr. Langhofer said. “We are not alleging fraud. We are not saying anyone is trying to steal the election.”Under questioning, witnesses repeatedly stated that they did not have any reason to believe that their ballots or those of other voters were not counted.Later in the hearing, Daniel Arellano, the Arizona Democratic Party’s counsel, directed questions to Zack Alcyone, one of the witnesses, who admitted that he was a business partner of Mr. Langhofer’s.Asked if he was being paid to testify in the case, Mr. Alcyone said he was uncertain.“Um, not that I know of, I haven’t discussed it,” he said.“But you may be?” Mr. Arellano asked.“It’s possible, I guess, I’m not sure,” Mr. Alcyone said.GeorgiaA federal lawsuit brought by the conservative lawyer L. Lin Wood Jr. sought to halt the statewide certification of the vote in Georgia, claiming that systemic issues with the election process had marred the state’s results.Russell J. Ramsland Jr., a cybersecurity worker and an expert witness in the case, filed an affidavit on Wednesday claiming that his company had uncovered evidence of inconsistencies in electronic voting machines. But the inconsistencies he claimed to identify were in districts in Michigan, not Georgia.The affidavit also listed a number of towns and counties in which Mr. Ramsland’s analysis ostensibly showed that the number of votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters. But most, if not all, of the places Mr. Ramsland listed appeared to be townships and counties in Minnesota, not Michigan.In a hearing on Thursday, the Trump-appointed judge, Steven D. Grimberg, pushed back against claims of voter fraud.“I understand that’s your argument, but what’s your evidence?” he asked after listening to Ray S. Smith III, a lawyer for Mr. Wood.“To halt the certification at literally the 11th hour would breed confusion and disenfranchisement that I find have no basis in fact and law,” Judge Grimberg said.He rejected the challenge.MichiganIn an opinion issued on Nov. 13, a federal judge in Michigan methodically dismantled testimony from six witnesses who claimed to have observed irregularities in the vote-counting process in Detroit.Casting doubt on their credibility and knowledge of the electoral process, Judge Timothy M. Kenny noted that the witnesses had skipped an information session that may have answered many of the questions they raised.“Perhaps if plaintiffs’ election challenger affiants had attended the Oct. 29, 2020, walk-through of the TCF Center ballot-counting location, questions and concerns could have been answered in advance of Election Day,” he wrote. “Regrettably, they did not and, therefore, plaintiffs’ affiants did not have a full understanding” of the absentee ballot tabulation process.In a separate case targeting absentee ballots in Michigan, a lawyer for the Trump campaign appeared to have initially filed the lawsuit in error in a federal claims court in Washington, D.C., that lacked the authority to hear it.“The complaint is captioned as though it were filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan,” Judge Elaine D. Kaplan wrote in an order transferring the case to the proper court. “Instead, however, it was filed with this court, presumably by accident.”PennsylvaniaAnticipating that Pennsylvania would be the tipping point in the election, lawyers for the Trump campaign prepared for legal challenges contesting votes in several parts of the state.In recent weeks, however, the lawyers have repeatedly acknowledged when pressed by judges that no evidence of election fraud materialized.In Federal District Court in Williamsport, Pa., the president’s lead lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, broke with his comments outside the courtroom backing the president’s claims of widespread fraud.“This is not a fraud case,” he told Judge Matthew W. Brann.In oral arguments in a case in Montgomery County on Nov. 10, Jonathan Goldstein, a lawyer for the Trump campaign, stated repeatedly that he also had not seen evidence of voter fraud in the vote that was contested there:THE COURT: In your petition, which is right before me — and I read it several times — you don’t claim that any electors or the Board of the County were guilty of fraud, correct? That’s correct?MR. GOLDSTEIN: Your honor, accusing people of fraud is a pretty big step. And it is rare that I call somebody a liar, and I am not calling the board of the D.N.C. or anybody else involved in this a liar. Everybody is coming to this with good faith. The D.N.C. is coming with good faith. We’re all just trying to get an election done. We think these were a mistake, but we think they are a fatal mistake, and these ballots ought not be counted.THE COURT: I understand. I am asking you a specific question, and I am looking for a specific answer. Are you claiming that there is any fraud in connection with these 592 disputed ballots?MR. GOLDSTEIN: To my knowledge at present, no.THE COURT: Are you claiming that there is any undue or improper influence upon the elector with respect to these 592 ballots?MR. GOLDSTEIN: To my knowledge at present, no.Lawyers representing the Trump campaign in Bucks County signed court documents on Wednesday informing a judge that there was no evidence of fraud in relation to ballots they were contesting there.The campaign had filed suit in the county’s Court of Common Pleas challenging more than 2,200 ballots as invalid. But in a joint stipulation of facts with lawyers for the Democratic Party, the Trump campaign’s lawyers admitted, “Petitioners do not allege, and there is no evidence of, fraud in connection with the challenged ballots.”The lawyers also stated there was no evidence of any “misconduct” or “impropriety” in the election. More

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is spending his last few months in office trying to undermine President-elect Joe Biden and the American economy.Witness Thursday’s decision to end a set of Federal Reserve lending programs established early this year to contain the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.The programs are emergency backstops for various kinds of borrowing. The central bank, for example, stands ready to buy state and local debt, but only at rates significantly higher than current market rates. If private lenders retreat, the Fed would take their place.The Fed, and many independent experts, say the programs are still valuable. Indeed, the Fed publicly opposed Mr. Mnuchin’s decision — a remarkable departure from the central bank’s almost invariable policy of publicly maintaining a united front with the Treasury.Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, said this week that the programs should end when they are no longer needed, “and I don’t think that time is yet or very soon.”The programs have been lightly used, but like the safety nets stretched beneath tightrope walkers, the number of people in the net isn’t really the point.Coronavirus case counts are surging, and there are signs that economic activity is faltering. Moreover, ending the backstops could itself unsettle markets.Perhaps most important, Mr. Mnuchin is foreclosing any expansion of the Fed programs.In creating the programs, the Fed insisted that the Treasury absorb any losses, and Congress provided $454 billion for that purpose. The programs were initially set up to run through the end of the year, and Mr. Mnuchin on Thursday said he would not extend that deadline. He also said that he wanted the Fed to return any money it hadn’t used.That last point is critical. The law allows the Fed to keep lending next year, but it does not allow the Treasury to provide more money to the Fed. By requesting the return of the money, Mr. Mnuchin is preventing the next Treasury secretary from easily reversing his decision.The Fed could have used the money to mount a more aggressive effort to reduce borrowing costs for state and local governments and for small businesses. Democrats frustrated by the refusal of Senate Republicans to approve another round of fiscal stimulus were eyeing the Fed programs as a source of aid if economic conditions deteriorated.A new Treasury secretary still could authorize an expansion of Fed lending backed by money from other pots. The Fed could revisit its insistence that its lending programs require a Treasury backstop. Congress could provide more money. But the chance that the Fed might be able to escape from its handcuffs is not a good reason for putting on the handcuffs.The more generous view of Mr. Mnuchin’s decision is that he is impelled by ideological motives to constrain federal support for the private sector. By limiting the tools available to the incoming Biden administration, however, he is substituting his own political preferences for those of the majority of Americans who just elected Mr. Biden.Mr. Mnuchin’s behavior contrasts sharply and shamefully with the Bush administration’s conduct during the similar period of economic crisis after the 2008 presidential election.Then, outgoing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson sought to preserve the incoming Obama administration’s room to maneuver, and to involve the incoming administration in important decisions. When the government announced a bailout for Bank of America in January 2009, officials made clear that both the outgoing and incoming presidents had approved the rescue plan.The less generous reading of Mr. Mnuchin’s behavior is that he is engaged in an act of sabotage with the simple goal of punishing President Trump’s political enemies.Whatever the motive, the decision is misguided. Mr. Mnuchin can serve the public interest, and avoid further damage to his own reputation, by maintaining the lending programs.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More