Donald Trump

Republicans at the national level have mostly stayed quiet during President Trump's monthlong baseless crusade against November's election results. But at the state and county level, it has been a different story.

Local election administrators, most of whom are elected along partisan lines, are in charge of the nuts and bolts of voting in America's decentralized elections system.

On more than one occasion, President Trump has demonstrated his willingness to use his pardon power to pluck a political ally or associate out of legal trouble.

Ivanka Trump gave a deposition Tuesday as part of suit filed by the Washington, D.C., government over the costs of her father's 2017 inauguration.

The District is suing the Trump inaugural committee, charging it with "grossly overpaying" for event space at the Trump International Hotel as a way of funneling money to the Trump family.

Updated 5:09 p.m. ET

In a last-minute push, the Trump administration announced Thursday that it will auction off drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in just over a month, setting up a final showdown with opponents before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

High-profile supporters of President Trump took the stage in Georgia on Wednesday to spread conspiracy theories and tell the state's Republicans not to vote in the crucial U.S. Senate runoffs there next month. The outcome of those races will determine which party controls the Senate next year.

At the rally in Atlanta, pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood took the microphone to tell the crowd that last month's election, won by Joe Biden, had been manipulated.

President Trump is being urged to use his remaining time in office to grant preemptive pardons to people close to him, including family members and maybe even himself.

Sean Hannity, whose Fox News program is closely followed by Trump, said on his radio show this week that the president, "out the door, needs to pardon his whole family and himself because they want this witch hunt to go on in perpetuity, they're so full of rage and insanity against the president."

On the day after the U.S. election, millions of votes in swing states were still being counted and there was no winner yet. But that didn't stop Janez Jansa, the prime minister of Slovenia, birthplace of first lady Melania Trump, from posting a congratulatory tweet, cheering on a second term for President Trump – and bashing the mainstream media for good measure.

As President Trump continues to contest the results of the election, President-elect Joe Biden continues to shape his administration, which will take office on Jan. 20. But there is still no formal transition underway, a far cry from the last several times new presidents have taken power.

In 2009, just before then-President-elect Barack Obama was to deliver his inaugural address, members of the outgoing Bush administration's national security team sat down with the people who were about to take their place.

Richard Pilger resigned as head of the Justice Department's election crimes branch Monday night, protesting Attorney General William Barr's memo authorizing federal prosecutors to pursue allegations of voting irregularities.

Barr's policy is seen as a step toward validating President Trump's baseless attacks on the integrity of an election in which he has been declared the loser.

Updated at 12:24 p.m. ET

Despite calls from many for a concession this weekend, President Trump and his campaign say they are pushing on to fight the election results tooth-and-nail.

Practically speaking, that means lawsuits.

"Our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated," Trump said in a statement Saturday. "The American People are entitled to an honest election: that means counting all legal ballots, and not counting any illegal ballots."

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has been "terminated," President Trump wrote in a tweet, and will be replaced by Christopher C. Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

"Chris will do a GREAT job," Trump tweeted shortly after noon. "Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service."

Sources say Esper already had a resignation letter ready to go — because Trump threatened to fire him in June over a disagreement about using active duty troops to quell street protests — and had recently updated it.

Updated at 10:17 p.m. ET

President Trump's campaign has unleashed a multipronged legal offensive directed at states where vote counting continued Thursday based on unsupported allegations about fraud and irregularities in the election.

Attorneys for the Trump campaign sought intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court and also filed suit in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada seeking remedies they hoped would help their prospects in those places. In some instances, that included requests for counting to cease altogether or at least pause for a time.

In the final stretch of a tough reelection campaign, a president who burst into public consciousness as a media sensation has returned to the warm embrace of conservative media outlets and their stars.

And they have been returning the favor: giving airtime to President Trump and broadcasting his rallies, and hammering Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, his family and his allies.

Updated at 7:45 p.m. ET

President Trump is celebrating a caravan of supporters who followed a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Central Texas.

In a Saturday night tweet, the president retweeted a video showing his supporters surrounding the bus, set to Tech N9ne's "Red Kingdom." "I LOVE TEXAS!" Trump said.

Three civil rights groups filed a federal class-action lawsuit Thursday challenging the Trump administration's recent crackdown on diversity training.

When then-presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke in Manchester, N.H., a week before the 2016 election, he said the opioid crisis was destroying lives and shattering families.

"We are going to stop the inflow of drugs into New Hampshire and into our country 100%," Trump promised.

It was a major campaign issue. Overdoses were surging in battleground states key to the election, like New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, has revealed himself to be "Anonymous," the author of a New York Times op-ed and book critical of the Trump presidency.

A federal judge has denied the Justice Department's attempt to intervene on President Trump's behalf in a defamation lawsuit filed by a woman who alleges he sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s.

In her memoir published last year, writer E. Jean Carroll accused the president of raping her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store more than two decades ago.

Trump denied the allegations and accused her of lying to sell books.

Updated Friday at 10:04 a.m. ET

A second federal court has blocked the Trump administration's attempt to make an unprecedented change to who is counted in the census numbers that determine each state's share of seats in Congress.

A three-judge panel — which includes 9th Circuit Judge Richard Clifton, as well as U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh and Judge Edward Chen in Northern California — issued the new court order Thursday.

President Trump is racing from tarmac to tarmac in the final weeks of the campaign, holding large rallies to blast out an array of closing arguments — buckshot style — for a second term in office.

So far, most of the stops have been in swing states — Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada. But he has also held rallies in Iowa and Georgia, states he won easily in 2016 in a sign the electoral map has shifted on him.

President Trump, who has for months been at loggerheads with public health experts on how best to contain the coronavirus pandemic, on Monday called Dr. Anthony Fauci a "disaster" and complained that Americans are tired of hearing from "these idiots," according to media reports of a call between Trump and campaign staff.

Updated at 7:32 p.m. ET

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to a speedy review of President Trump's attempt to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the census numbers used to reallocate seats in Congress.

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska excoriated President Trump in a telephone town-hall meeting with constituents on Wednesday, saying the president badly mishandled the coronavirus pandemic, mistreats women and cozies up to dictators.

"I'm not at all apologetic for having fought for my values against his in places where I think his are deficient, not just for a Republican but for an American," Sasse said.

Updated at 9:05 p.m. ET

President Trump was back on the campaign trail on Monday, telling a packed outdoor rally in Florida that he feels "powerful" after his bout with the coronavirus.

Trump spoke for about an hour to an enthusiastic crowd, at an event that his campaign billed as the start of a breakneck stretch of travel leading up to the Nov. 3 election.

Trump stuck to much of his usual stump speech, but he did touch on the illness that led to him being hospitalized just over a week ago. He said he's feeling good now.

Members of Congress, advocacy groups and a former administration official say Operation Warp Speed should release its vaccine contracts with pharmaceutical companies, following an NPR report that the Trump administration awarded billions of dollars through a third party, bypassing the usual contracting process.

Soon after being discharged from the hospital for treatment for COVID-19, President Trump tweeted the slur "Chinese virus" to refer to the coronavirus, something he's often repeated during the pandemic.

It's the latest example of Trump's alarming language that critics charge is xenophobic, discriminatory and even white supremacist. While Trump denies those labels, he has increasingly returned to the issue of race in the runup to the November election.

Updated at 8:31 p.m. ET

President Trump's campaign is calling for next week's presidential debate to be held in person in Miami, despite the organizing commission's decision to hold it virtually.

Campaign manager Bill Stepien said Thursday night there is "no medical reason" why the debate should be shifted virtually. He cited a memo from White House physician Sean Conley, who said Trump would be safe for public events by Saturday.

Updated at 12:52 p.m.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Wednesday that he and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are discussing potential stand-alone bills for aid to airlines, small businesses and Americans. He said the Trump administration was "still willing to be engaged" on piecemeal aid bills, though it was not optimistic about a comprehensive aid bill.

Updated at 8:18 p.m. ET

President Trump walked out of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday evening, planning on receiving the remainder of his treatment for COVID-19 at the White House.

He was seen pumping his fist in the air on the way out of the building and didn't respond to any questions from the press. Upon arriving back at the White House, Trump walked up the staircase of the South Portico entrance, removed his mask, gave reporters standing below a thumbs-up and saluted Marine One.