President Donald Trump’s ineffectual bid to persuade the courts to overturn his defeat at the polls last month suffered another defeat on Christmas Eve as a federal appeals court rejected his attempt to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s win by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin.

A three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously dismissed arguments from Trump’s attorneys that the Wisconsin Election Commission violated the U.S. Constitution through steps prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, including easing photo identification requirements and allowing the use of dropboxes to collect absentee ballots.

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Conflicting internal memos created confusion inside the White House on Wednesday about when staffers in the Executive Office of the President should begin preparing to leave work ahead of the transition next month.

In an email Wednesday morning from the White House Management Office, EOP staffers were instructed to “please disregard” an earlier memo that had been sent Tuesday informing them that they “will start departing” on the week of Jan. 4. Both messages were obtained by POLITICO.

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President Donald Trump is plotting a final stand in Congress on Jan. 6, casting it as the ultimate loyalty test in his quest to remain in power and shutting out anyone who won’t get in line.

Trump has been strategizing in recent days with a band of his fiercest congressional supporters about the effort, which will involve lodging objections during the typically pro forma congressional certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

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Officials at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative appointed by President Donald Trump are delaying the transition to President-elect Joe Biden’s team by refusing to schedule meetings, according to officials with knowledge of the situation.

No meetings yet: USTR political staff members are still rebuffing efforts from Biden's transition landing team to meet with career staff at the agency, said one former trade official familiar with the situation.

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Something’s missing from Georgia’s high-stakes Senate runoffs: the polls.

After a disastrous November election for the polling industry, when the polls again underestimated President Donald Trump (who lost regardless) as well as GOP candidates down the ballot, pollsters are mostly sidelined in the run-up to the Jan. 5 Georgia elections, which most observers regard as toss-ups.

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It started with a phone call.

In mid-November, President Donald Trump rang Monica Palmer, the Republican chair of an obscure board in Michigan that had just declared Joe Biden winner of the state’s most populous county.

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WASHINGTON — Undeterred by dismissals and admonitions from judges, President Donald Trump’s campaign continued with its unprecedented efforts to overturn the results of the Nov 3. election Sunday, saying it had filed a new petition with the Supreme Court.

The petition seeks to reverse a trio of Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases having to do with mail-in ballots and asks the court to reject voters’ will and allow the Pennsylvania General Assembly to pick its own slate of electors.

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Jen O’Malley Dillon, President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign manager and incoming White House deputy chief of staff, walked back comments she made in a recent interview suggesting that congressional Republicans were “a bunch of f---ers.”

The mea culpa came in a virtual conversation Thursday with veteran Democratic operatives Stephanie Cutter and Teddy Goff, during which O’Malley Dillon acknowledged she “used some words that I probably could have chosen better” when speaking with author Glennon Doyle for a Glamour magazine interview published Tuesday.

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Before recognizing Joe Biden as America’s next president, Mitch McConnell was careful to make sure President Donald Trump was in the loop.

The Senate majority leader transmitted a message to the White House ahead of time that he would be giving remarks congratulating Biden on his win over Trump, according to a source familiar with the matter. What might have been a pro forma congratulatory speech had morphed into an exceedingly delicate issue in GOP politics: finally admitting that Biden won.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned Republican senators Tuesday during a private caucus call not to object to the election results on Jan. 6, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

McConnell told his caucus that challenging the results would force Republicans to take a “terrible vote” because they would need to vote it down and appear against President Donald Trump. Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) also echoed McConnell’s remarks.

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MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday congratulated Joe Biden on winning the U.S. presidential election after weeks of holding out.

Putin's message to Biden came a day after the Electoral College confirmed Biden as the nation’s next president, ratifying his November victory in an authoritative state-by-state repudiation of President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede that he had lost.

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When Joe Biden heads to Georgia on Tuesday to campaign for Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, it won’t be because he wants to. He has to.

The success of the president-elect’s agenda hinges on the two Senate runoff races that will decide the balance of power in the chamber. If Ossoff and Warnock fail to defeat Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler on Jan. 5, it will mean a GOP-controlled Senate that’s guaranteed to stand in the way of implementing Biden’s policy goals.

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Senate Republicans are finally starting to recognize Joe Biden as the next president of the United States — even if they waited until the very last minute.

When asked on Monday afternoon whether Biden was the president-elect, some GOP senators paused and asked how far along the Electoral College count was taking place that day. Others declined to comment until results were officially certified and until Biden climbed past the necessary 270 votes.

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The Electoral College officially voted on Monday to make Joe Biden the 46th president of the United States, formalizing his victory under constitutional procedure and dashing President Donald Trump's longshot hopes of reversing the 2020 election results.

The votes rolled in throughout the day, with electors gathering in all 50 state capitals and Washington, D.C., for incident-free ceremonies in line with the vote totals in those states, after legal challenges and attempts to delegitimize the election from Trump and his supporters.

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With the Electoral College voting Monday on the Nov. 3 presidential election, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise says the legal process must "play out" while President Donald Trump continues to try to overturn election results.

"Let the legal process play out ... if you want to restore trust by millions of people who are still very frustrated and angry about what happened, that’s why you got to have this whole system play out," the Louisiana Republican said on "Fox News Sunday."

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Sen. Lamar Alexander said in an interview that aired Sunday he hopes President Donald Trump "puts the country first" and congratulates President-elect Joe Biden on his victory.

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," Alexander said there should not be any doubt "after Monday," when the Electoral College casts its votes across the nation, about the winner of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

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It's an unspoken rule not to talk politics at the dinner table — unless you have a podcast recording, then it's fine! POLITICO's Sabrina Rodriguez gets real with her Cuban family — abuela Diana, aunt Gloria and mom Martha — about their 2020 votes, and how Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade County helped Donald Trump win Florida. Then she talks to Scott Bland about whether the ultimate purple state is drifting red.

Subscribe and rate Nerdcast on Apple Podcasts.

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Republicans Thursday to drop plans for a hearing centering on alleged “irregularities” in the 2020 presidential election.

The hearing, called by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, just two days after members of the Electoral College meet to cast their 306 electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden and 232 for President Donald Trump.

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A large majority of Republicans and independents have faith President Donald Trump will follow through on his musings about running for president again in 2024, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday.

Among Republicans, 76 percent believed a 2024 run to be likely, along with 60 percent of independents. Democrats were less certain, with only 47 percent believing a run to be likely. Trump has flirted with running again in four years as his unfounded claims of a stolen victory this year increasingly fall apart in court. Still, a majority of Republicans in Congress refuse to recognize President-elect Joe Biden as the electoral victor and Trump continues to enjoy wide support within his party.

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The Supreme Court has rejected a bid by a Republican member of Congress and other GOP activists to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.

In a one-sentence order on Tuesday afternoon, the justices turned down the emergency request from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and two other House candidates to decertify the results of last month’s election in the Keystone State.

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