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WASHINGTON — Sen. Harry Reid told BuzzFeed News Tuesday that members of the Electoral College should receive an intelligence briefing on Russian interference in the US election before they vote on Dec. 19.

The Senate’s minority leader was interviewed at a BuzzFeed Brews event, where the retiring Nevada lawmaker also reflected on the state of the US Senate.

“I think this is as big a deal as Watergate, as 9/11. I think they should have a 9/11-type commission. I know that [US Sens.] Dianne Feinstein and Ben Cardin and others are calling for that. I think it’s a step in the right direction,” Reid said. “This is a scandal that has been uncovered.”

In addition to calling for the commission, Reid said he placed much of the blame on FBI Director James Comey.

“I think Comey has done as much to denigrate the FBI in just the short three years he’s been here as J. Edgar Hoover did during his time,” Reid said.

When asked about whether he would trust President-elect Donald Trump to choose a better replacement for Comey if he stepped down, Reid responded that he did not think Comey would leave the position because he has a “sweetheart deal” there.

Tim Lundin, courtesy of the Newseum

More current events came up during Reid’s one-on-one interview. Regarding a group of electors has demanded a briefing on Russian hacking in a last-ditch effort to stop Donald Trump from becoming president — a move that has drawn some support from former Hillary Clinton campaign staffers — Reid said that “of course” they should get briefings.

“If they had the same briefings that I had they would be concerned about the election, and I believe focusing on the Electoral College is important,” Reid said.

During the interview, which also focused on his legacy, Reid also reflected on his regret for voting for the Iraq war.

He also said that his old antagonist, Mitt Romney, “was right” about a central battle of the 2012 election: Russia’s place as the major threat to the United States.

“Me and Mitt are pals,” he joked, saying they only communicate through the press.

When asked about the challenges Sens. Chuck Schumer, the new Democratic leader, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, would face, Reid said they would have to make sure that the Senate stays the Senate as it has been known in the last century.

“Republicans have taken the filibuster to extremes that are unknown to anyone,” he said.

Reid, who changed the Senate’s rules during his time as majority leader to weaken the filibuster, said that while it was not included in the Constitution, the filibuster had developed over time to make the Senate “operable.” But recently, Reid said, the Senate had become “inoperable” and filibuster reform became necessary.

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee needs “competition” as it looks for a new chairman and direction post-election, he added.

“The DNC does nothing to help state organizations. That’s what they should be spending their time on,” Reid said, adding that there’s a group of politicians who need to stay involved, including President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Reid, who gave his farewell address on the Senate floor last week, will be retiring after a three-decade Senate career. He was elected to the Senate in 1986, and has been the Democratic leader for more than a decade.

As Reid prepares to leave the Senate, he said he and his family plan to stick around the Washington area.

Tarini Parti, BuzzFeed News’ US Senate reporter, conducted the interview.

Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — A longtime Hillary Clinton operative is launching a bid for vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, marking an early move inside Clinton's extended orbit to help shape the party in the wake of its surprise loss last month.

The staffer, Adam Parkhomenko, worked for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, co-founded the group Ready For Hillary in 2013, and served on her last campaign as the director of grassroots engagement before leaving for a role at the DNC.

Parkhomenko, 31, said Tuesday that he hopes to succeed former Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak, one of the party's current five vice chairs. Rybak, however, has already endorsed another Democrat to step into his own vice chair seat: Michael Blake, a New York assemblyman who worked on President Obama's campaigns.

The DNC has been seen at points as one of the party's less influential entities, with little structural influence in how Democrats run key state and federal races.

Still, after a blindsiding defeat to Donald Trump in last month's election, Democrats have cast competition for top DNC leadership roles, from vice chair to chair, as part of a proxy battle for the direction of the party. The election of one leading contender for DNC chair, Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, would be seen as a victory for the progressive populist wing of the party that backed Bernie Sanders over Clinton.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez, another progressive and one of Clinton's most active surrogates, is also expected to enter the chair's race. Interim chair Donna Brazile, a veteran Democratic operative, stepped into the role this summer after a cyberattack on the DNC prompted the resignation of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Parkhomenko's candidacy also comes as hundreds of Clinton staffers have been searching for roles inside the party's newly shaken infrastructure after failing to deliver a race seen as one the former first lady should've been able to win.

Earlier this month, Virginia Democratic strategist Ben Tribbett said he'd been trying to recruit Parkhomenko to run in the state's upcoming lieutenant governor's race. The former Clinton aide has run for public office once before, losing a Democratic primary campaign for the Virginia House of Delegates in 2009 at the age of 23.

Parkhomenko said he has already secured support from a significant number of DNC members, who meet in late February to vote on the party's leadership. He pointed to plans to invest heavily in grassroots organizing — his focus on the Clinton campaign — and help retool the DNC's presence on the ground in the states.

Via courts.delaware.gov

WASHINGTON — The Delaware Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that death sentences handed down previously in the state must be converted to life sentences without the possibility of parole.

In August, the state high court ruled in Rauf v. Delaware that the state's death sentencing law was unconstitutional in the wake of the US Supreme Court's January decision striking down Florida's death sentencing law.

Derrick Powell, one of fewer than 20 inmates on Delaware's death row, challenged his death sentence in light of that August ruling and the US Supreme Court case, Hurst v. Florida.

On Thursday, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that its August decision is "a new watershed procedural rule of criminal procedure" that must be applied retroactively — meaning it applies to death sentences handed down under the law now held to be unconstitutional.

As such, "Powell's death sentence must be vacated and he must be sentenced to" life in prison without the possibility of parole, the court held.

None of the court's five justices dissented from the unsigned Thursday opinion — a marked contrast from the closely divided 3-2 decision in the August case.

Read the decision in Powell v. Delaware:

David M. Benett / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The day-long celebration of the My Brother's Keeper program with 35 days remaining in the Obama administration begged a question: Will the program that emphasizes mentorship and network support for black and Latino boys have a place in the next administration?

Broderick Johnson, the group's chair who also serves assistant to the president and White House cabinet secretary, said during a roundtable with reporters that while he's yet to speak with President-elect Donald Trump's transition team about continuing the initiative at the federal level, representatives from the Department of Education — out of which "a significant number" of MBK's programs are run — in fact have.

Johnson said the administration is "hopeful" the Trump administration sees the importance of making investments in supporting communities and cities. "We feel pretty confident [in] the degree to which it can be demonstrated to the next administration that these programs are effective based on the evidence and data."

On Wednesday the White House hosted leaders from its community challenge cities and locales to celebrate and reflect on the successes, including action in almost 250 MBK communities, policy victories in mentorship, Pell Grants for incarcerated individuals to obtain a degree, and a first-of-its-kind budget measure in New York committing $20 million to expanding MBK-related programs.

For the question of MBK's future in the next administration as a subtext of the summit, in his remarks Wednesday, Obama — who was introduced by Malachi Hernandez, a success story from Boston — did not address if it would continue, saying only he'd be involved with MBK for the rest of his life.

"My Brother's Keeper was not about me, it was not about my presidency," Obama said. "It’s not even just about Malachi and all these amazing young men behind me. It's about all of us working together."

But already, Democrats are beginning to implore Trump to keep it.

Boston Mayor Marty J. Walsh said Wednesday said his city's commitment to MBK was one of reasons the Boston saw decreases in the number of arrests his police officers made. Major crime fell 9% between 2014 and 2015 and arrests went down 15% between 2014 and 2015 — results that buttress Walsh's belief that "one of the best things Trump could do is to continue supporting it."

"There's been an incredible foundation laid in this country for black and brown boys, and if you look at the numbers, it's showing progress in the right direction," Walsh told BuzzFeed News in an interview. "Knowing that there's infrastructure already set up across the country, it's a great thing to build off of."

Multiple reps with Trump's transition team declined to say whether it was something that Trump might consider. In recent days, a caravan of black athletes, entertainers and others paraded into Trump Tower where they discussed the needs of urban communities. Focusing on these communities is said to be one of major focuses the Dr. Ben Carson's Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But White House officials, buoyed by Obama — who said that their work on MBK while in control of the White House was "just the beginning" — are optimistic some of the slack can be picked up by the nonprofit foundation world and the private sector via the MBK Alliance.

"We were always prepared for the fact that when President Obama left office a lot of the MBK work of course would have to rest with local communities," Johnson said.

David Brock, head of American Bridge, in 2014.

Danny Johnston / Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A leading Democratic opposition group, American Bridge, is gearing up to play a critical role in an effort to take down, or publicly taint, President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet nominees by enlisting backup from Hillary Clinton's transition team and sharing in-depth research in meetings with key senators.

The super PAC, which also has a nonprofit arm, is digging into nominees' past statements, voting records, tax documents, and business ties in detail, passing along their findings to a group of senators and their staff members in an effort to coordinate attacks on Trump's nominees in confirmation hearings, the group's founder David Brock told BuzzFeed News, laying out his plans in an interview.

The group has about 20 researchers in addition to outside help from former Democratic presidential nominee Clinton's transition team and Senate Democratic leadership aides working on the project. Even if the nominees have a good shot at being confirmed, Brock said, he wants to expose and debate their vulnerabilities through this process.

"We're going to leave no stone unturned," said Brock, who has a cluster of affiliated groups funded by major Democratic donors. "Our goal is to keep Trump unpopular."

Brock didn't give specific names of all the senators, but he believes they have a core group dedicated to this effort. He’s had dinner with Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and is also reaching out to certain Republicans — including Sen. John McCain, whom Brock described as a "patriot” — who might have reservations about some of the nominees.

"We've circled at least 10 Democratic senators we think will form a nucleus around anything Trump," he said.

Bridge, one of several Democratic groups headed by Brock, a staunch Clinton ally and D.C. operative at times praised and criticized within the party, has played a major role in pushing opposition research against candidates in recent elections, spending $19 million in 2016 though the super PAC alone. But this level of outreach on Capitol Hill marks a new role for the group heading into Trump's first term.

In recent weeks, Democrats have begun to chart their next steps following a devastating loss for the party in last month’s presidential election. With a Republican-controlled Congress and hundreds of Clinton campaign staffers now looking for their next project, operatives and donors across the party are jockeying for a piece of a growing Democratic resistance effort aimed at Trump.

Aides at another central Democratic organization, the liberal think tank Center For American Progress, announced Thursday that they would relaunch their advocacy arm as an anti-Trump research, policy, and digital organizing outlet, focusing at the outset on cabinet selections.

The CAP Action Fund will specialize in policy-heavy research and analysis, drawing on a team of policy experts, said its director, Adam Jentleson, a former senior aide to Sen. Harry Reid. But, he added, “Just to be clear, we’re going to do oppo, too. There’s plenty of work to go around.”

Both CAP and American Bridge have pitched themselves as a centralized resource for the Senate on Trump research. (Jentleson said in an interview Thursday that he is already in daily contact with Senate leadership as part of his work with Reid and will continue at CAP to organize extensive outreach with Democrats there.)

“This is fairly coordinated in the sense that all this work happens in coalitions — and CAP is leading a lot of those coalitions,” said Igor Volsky, CAP Action Fund’s deputy director.

Brock, too, said he has already been in touch with key senators on detailed plans to go after Trump’s nominees, adding that Bridge and CAP have a good working relationship, but the opposition research they’ve done on Trump for the past three years is “unmatched.”

He named the president-elect’s pick for secretary of state, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, as most vulnerable. A handful of Republican senators — including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio who is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — have expressed concerns about Tillerson’s work for Exxon in Russia, and his relationship with Vladimir Putin. Democratic researchers are now scouring Russian-language and Cyrillic databases to unearth anything against him, including going through his time leading Exxon’s joint venture in Russia.

Even blocking Tillerson, about whom a variety of Republican officials have raised concerns, may prove difficult. Senior Republican national security officials like Bob Gates and Condoleezza Rice led the push for his nomination; although some of the officials have had past business ties to Tillerson, they lend the pick credibility in some circles.

Brock said he also wants to go past Russia and tie Tillerson to Trump’s adviser Steve Bannon, who advocated for Tillerson, according to the New York Times. Bannon, a self-described populist nationalist, has become a flashpoint for his stewardship of the right-wing website Breitbart and its position as a platform for the white nationalist movement known as the alt-right. “Democrats need to focus on more than just his business ties — why did Trump's neo-fascist adviser back his appointment?” Brock said.

The group is already airing digital ads targeting Republican Sens. Jeff Flake in Arizona, Marco Rubio in Florida, and Dean Heller in Nevada. The ad, which is promoted on Facebook, shows GOP Sen. John McCain expressing concerns against Tillerson based on his ties to Putin.

American Bridge also has a researcher currently in Alabama, going through archives to gather information on Sen. Jeff Sessions — from his military records to news clippings from his hometown newspaper.

There are some nominees who are getting a pass: the former generals Trump has selected for cabinet positions, because Brock believes they will actually stand up to Trump if needed.

For others, including Trump's treasury secretary pick, Steve Mnuchin — a former investment banker and hedge fund investor — the group sees an opportunity to chip away at Trump's populist image. "[Mnuchin's] certainly not for the people," he said. "That's the path for Democrats to start winning back Trump supporters."

And on Ben Carson, Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, Brock said American Bridge already has a thick file from when Carson ran for president that they will be re-using. "He's as unqualified as they come and he's said as much himself."

The group will even challenge Elaine Chao, who is up for transportation secretary, and expected to have a smooth confirmation process. Chao is a former labor secretary and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's wife.

"Why not make the process as painful as possible?” Brock said.

WASHINGTON — A transgender female student at an Ohio school will be able to continue using the girls' restroom under a Thursday evening federal appeals court's ruling.

An order that the Highland Local School District allow the student to use the girls' restroom will remain in effect for now, the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled. The court denied the school district's request to halt enforcement of a preliminary injunction issued against the school.

The move is the latest in a series of lawsuits and other actions over the question of whether existing civil rights laws — here, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 — protect against anti-transgender discrimination through their bans on sex discrimination. The Obama administration has backed the view that transgender people are protected by the current laws.

Highland's request for a stay was considered by Judges Damon Keith, Jeff Sutton, and Bernice Donald.

"[T]he record establishes that Doe, a vulnerable eleven year old with special needs, will suffer irreparable harm if prohibited from using the girls' restroom," according to the court unsigned order. "The district court issued the injunction to protect Doe’s constitutional and civil rights, a purpose that is always in the public interest. ... Thus, a stay is improper in this case."

Judge Sutton dissented from the order denying the stay, pointing to a stay issued by the US Supreme Court over the summer in a similar case out of Virginia. The high court agreed to hear that case, G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board.

"The Supreme Court presumably will resolve the Title IX issue in 2017," he wrote. "In the meantime, the Court has indicated that we should wait for further instructions before granting relief on these sorts of claims."

This is a developing story. Please check back at BuzzFeed News for more.

Comet Ping Pong in Washington, DC.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

The North Carolina man charged with bringing loaded guns into a Washington, DC, pizza restaurant in connection with the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory pleaded not guilty on Friday to federal and local firearm charges.

Edgar Welch, 28, will remain in jail as the case proceeds. Prosecutors had argued that Welch should stay behind bars because he was a flight risk and posed a danger to the community. Welch's attorney did not challenge that request at a hearing on Friday morning.

Welch allegedly walked into Comet Ping Pong, a restaurant in northwest Washington, around 3 p.m. on Dec. 4 carrying a loaded AR-15 rifle and a .38 caliber handgun. He later told police that he was investigating reports he’d seen online that the restaurant was the site of a child sex slave ring, according to charging documents.

A federal grand jury returned an indictment on Thursday charging Welch with one federal count of interstate transportation of a firearm with the intent to commit an offense, as well as two charges under DC law, for assault with a dangerous weapon and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence.

The local possession charge—which Welch wasn’t charged with when he was first arrested—carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in jail, as well as a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. The federal charge and the local assault charge have maximum sentences of 10 years.

Employees and customers inside the restaurant at the time, including children, fled when Welch entered, prosecutors said. An employee who was outside said that he heard three loud bangs, and that when he came inside Welch pointed the rifle at him, an allegation that Welch has denied. No one was injured. Welch told police that he fired the rifle to try to open a locked door, and left the restaurant when he found no evidence of child sex trafficking, prosecutors said.

Investigators said they found a shotgun and more ammunition in Welch’s car. They recovered messages from his phone which allegedly showed him trying to recruit others to join him in driving from North Carolina to Washington to investigate "Pizzagate." In one message quoted in the charging papers, he allegedly wrote that his plans included “possibly sacraficing [sic] the lives of a few for the lives of many.”

Welch has been in jail since his arrest, but didn't have a formal detention hearing before a judge until Friday's court appearance. He was initially arrested only on local charges and appeared in DC Superior Court on Dec. 13 for a detention hearing, only to have the government dismiss that case as it pursued charges in federal court.

Welch’s lawyer, assistant federal public defender Dani Jahn, argued at his first appearance in federal court that same day that a detention hearing should be held the following day, but the judge agreed with the government’s request to schedule it for Friday.

Prosecutors had asked the judge to keep Welch behind bars because of the nature of the crimes he was charged with, arguing that he posed a danger to the community and was a flight risk. In court papers filed on Thursday, prosecutors said there were no conditions that could secure Welch’s appearance back in court in Washington for future court dates.

“The defendant brought an assault rifle to a pizza restaurant, placing employees, customers, and children in danger. Earlier, he attempted to recruit others to join him. He also expressed and showed a willingness even to endanger his own life. He travelled hundreds of miles to commit these crimes; he has no means to support himself in the District of Columbia; and he has no contacts with this community,” prosecutors wrote.

Welch is due back in court on Jan. 5 before US District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for a hearing to update the judge on the status of the case.

LINK: Comet Ping Pong “Pizzagate” Suspect Allegedly Tried To Recruit Others To Join Him

Mike Hisey, 53, in Philadelphia on Nov. 13.

Mark Makela / Getty Images

Donald Trump has succeeded, against all odds, in turning the alleged Russian cyberattack on the United States into a partisan issue. Putin's faves with Republicans are way up!

But some of the wonderment at Trump's apparent defense of hacking misses the obvious piece of context: A Dec. 19 vote at the Electoral College in which he needs 270 votes to become president.

Anyone who is used to the norms of American politics, to many decades of tradition, knows that vote is merely symbolic and that last-ditch efforts to take the presidency from Trump on Dec. 19 are wild-eyed fantasy.

But Trump has shown a remarkable imagination as to the flexibility of American norms. And outside those norms, there is no reason not to take the Electoral College seriously. Trump knows that what veteran political observers like me dismiss as ridiculous is, unless actually illegal, entirely possible. And so the Dec. 19 vote looms.

Trump's suggestions that the CIA is skewing intelligence to undermine him politically are how you keep your side in line in American politics in 2016: You turn an analytical issue into a tribal one. If arcane health care policy details like the individual mandate can become hyperpartisan, why not the shadowy outlines of intelligence reporting?

And so what Trump is doing right now is turning the hacking story partisan, with a vote looming. (This is what he's doing; I'm not going to try to project "strategy.")

Anyway, this is a theory we can test. There is, I’m told, talk of Trump’s inviting a sympathetic, Ryan- and McConnell-led congressional investigation after the Electoral College vote. Let’s see if President Trump acknowledges the Russian role — in mayhem, if not in his legitimacy — then.

The best sourced reporter in The Tower, the Times' Maggie Haberman, hears something similar:

So are Trump's attacks on the CIA really about the Electoral College?

Well, the notion that this sclerotic institution could take the election away is, as any veteran observer of US politics will tell you, a pathetic liberal fantasy and ludicrous breach of historical norms.

You expect Donald Trump to take that to mean it can't happen?

Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

WASHINGTON — The battle over Monday's Electoral College vote is the beginning, not the end. A larger campaign to undermine the legitimacy — and constitutionality — of Donald Trump’s presidency is likely just getting underway.

Discomfort with Donald Trump before and since Election Day, the divisiveness of the 2016 election more broadly, and the popular vote mismatch with the Electoral College result have produced yet another unusual moment in an unusual year.

Many Democrats and other opponents of Trump have been working to change the results of the election through the Electoral College vote on Monday — an almost-impossible-to-succeed effort to deny Trump a majority of the electoral votes as required to become president. Presuming that mission is unsuccessful, prepare for the next phase: Jan. 6, when Congress formally tallies the results of those votes.

At that time, as few as two members of Congress — one in the House and one in the Senate — could lodge an objection to the results of the vote in a particular state or overall. While similarly unlikely to change the outcome, given current circumstances, it would be another wrench thrown into the transition of power — and another effort to make the case of opposition to the coming Trump presidency.

But even then, don’t expect it to end. Efforts to undermine Trump’s presidency by Democrats and those Republicans who believe Trump is unfit for office — or violating his oath of office — almost certainly will continue, a cascading series of constant challenges.

In short, Monday could be the opening salvo of a new campaign against a president's legitimacy — a fact-based version of the racist, fact-free birther conspiracy. This time around, the questions raised appear to be legitimate — Trump’s international conflicts of interest are real and, according to the unanimous view of US intelligence agencies, Russian attempts to influence the election are likewise real. The problem this time, however, is that — for the most part — these are uncharted waters and there are no established solutions.

Like the birther conspiracy that plagued Obama (despite its falsity), the anti-Trump sentiment being stirred in the attempt to persuade electors to abandon Trump could continue to circle the political waters for years to come, playing a part in breaking down further yet another norm: the presumed legitimacy of the presidency. Trump would become the third president in a row whose legitimacy would be perpetually in question, reasonably or not, by significant numbers of opposite party.

It could continue until the issues are resolved or Trump is no longer president. What’s more, that’s likely exactly what Trump’s opponents want.

Big names in law, politics, and popular culture — from Laurence Tribe to Martin Sheen — have taken to encouraging the electors in states that voted for Trump to become so-called faithless electors and vote for Hillary Clinton or, at the least, a presidential candidate other than Trump in order to keep him from reaching the 270-vote majority needed to become the 45th president of the United States. Kate McKinnon, extending her Saturday Night Live Hillary Clinton character for another week, made the case in a Love Actually parody this weekend. Lawyers and politicians across the country are, in slightly more nuanced tones, laying out the same case.

Via buzzfeed.com

The effort almost certainly will not succeed — and likely will not even come close to doing so. Trump’s Election Day results mean that 306 electors are pledged to support him on Monday. Thirty-seven electors would need to vote for someone other than Trump in order for the plan, such as it is, to succeed. What’s more, the electors would need to do so in the face of laws in more than half of the states barring electors from voting for anyone other than the popular vote winner in the state. (It also is true, though, that these laws are mostly untested in court and their constitutionality is questioned.)

Despite the difficulties, Federalist #68 — in which Alexander Hamilton discusses the role of electors, laid out in the Constitution and, subsequently, 12th Amendment — is suddenly being quoted everywhere.

Hamilton wrote that the constitutional convention was worried about “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper” influence over governmental decision-making such as the selection of president and “guarded against all danger of this sort” by “not ma[king] the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men” but rather a group selected “for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment.”

More than 225 years later, social media discussion of #HamiltonElectors is the latest of countless efforts over the past year to keep Trump from becoming president.

Tribe, along with Norm Eisen and Richard Painter, published a memo on Friday regarding Trump’s coming international conflicts of interest — providing “ample reason,” Eisen tweeted, for electors to vote against Trump. The American Constitution Society (progressive lawyers’ answer to the Federalist Society) is also pushing the idea. Electors, unsuccessfully, sought an intelligence briefing for all electors about the Russian efforts to influence the election.

Attempts to buttress this argument with court backing in advance of Monday’s vote through a series of lawsuits in states that Clinton won has been, on the surface, uniformly unsuccessful. Every one of the lawsuits has failed.

While ruling against electors’ appeal based on the case presented to the court, however, the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit on Friday night acknowledged in a footnote that “there is language in the Twelfth Amendment that could arguably support” the would-be faithless electors’ argument — pointing to a recent legal analysis of the issue.

Nonetheless, while nothing is certain until it happens (especially this year), there is no real reason not to believe that well over 270 electors will cast votes for Donald Trump and Mike Pence on Monday.

Those votes, however, are just one more step forward. Assuming that effort fails to stop Trump, expect to start hearing about Title 3, Section 15 of the US Code and “objections” to the electoral vote results. An objection can be lodged in writing by two members of Congress: one each from the House and the Senate.

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images

Although rare, this step is not unprecedented. In 2005, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio filed such an objection, specifically to the counting of the votes of Ohio’s electors in the wake of allegations of voting irregularities. The objection was rejected within a few hours, with only 32 members of Congress — all but one from the House — voting against the counting of Ohio’s votes.

It’s easy to imagine a House member and senator on Jan. 6 laying out the case, in writing, for why the Electoral College’s vote in favor of Trump should not stand. Back in 2005, Boxer acknowledged that the effort then was not to stop Bush’s re-election, but rather to highlight voting problems.

But, in all likelihood, none of these efforts will stop Trump from being inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017. Prominent lawyers and scholars’ beliefs that Trump should not become president, however, could quickly turn into the ways in which they believe his presidency itself can and should be criticized — if not ended.

Enter the Emoluments Clause — the constitutional provision referenced in the Eisen, Painter, and Tribe memo and elsewhere — which bars the president and other federal officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

“While holding office, Mr. Trump will receive—by virtue of his continued interest in the Trump Organization and his stake in hundreds of other entities—a steady stream of monetary and other benefits from foreign powers and their agents,” the trio of scholars wrote. A handful of Democrats in the Senate already have made it clear they will not be dropping this as an issue.

It’s not just emoluments, either. On Friday, John Shattuck — a former senior State Department official and professor — raised what he called “the specter of treason” regarding the president-elect’s established and alleged ties to Russia in a Boston Globe op-ed. Specifically, Shattuck questions the implications of the fact that “Trump publicly reject[s] ... intelligence agency conclusions” about Russia’s involvement in the hacked Democratic emails during the campaign and likewise rejects further investigation from Congress.

The efforts aimed at opposing Trump are not like the birther conspiracy, insofar as they are based on factual concerns about real things. But, just as Donald Trump took credit for pushing the conspiracy theory about Obama’s birthplace until Obama released his “long-form” birth certificate, Monday’s Electoral College vote could be the first in a series of steps that opponents won’t stop taking until Trump releases information, including his tax returns, and cuts ties with his businesses — or leaves office.

President Obama announces Judge Merrick Garland as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Judge Merrick Garland will not be joining the US Supreme Court after months of Senate inaction on the nomination. Instead, in January, he has decided to resume hearing cases in the federal appeals court on which he already sits in Washington, DC.

The move back to the bench at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit will end a 10-month hiatus from hearing cases while his ultimately unsuccessful nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was pending.

Garland — the chief judge of the DC Circuit — stopped handling cases in the federal appeals court after he was nominated in March to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat, a practice common among Supreme Court nominees. Garland will be back on the DC Circuit bench to hear arguments on Jan. 18, though, according to the court’s calendar.

Garland’s nomination to the high court technically is still pending, but the Senate recessed for the year on Friday, ending any chance he would have had of a hearing or a vote. Garland’s nomination, as well as those of President Obama’s other judicial nominees, will be sent back to the White House at the start of the new year.

At the annual Hanukkah reception at the White House on Dec. 14, Garland was one of the president's guests, along with justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Obama called Garland "one of the country’s finest jurists," and, in a nod to his failed nomination, said that Garland would "continue to serve our country with distinction as the chief judge on the DC Circuit."

Garland's assignment to the calendar for January appears to signal that he, too, understands that his Supreme Court nomination fight is over. It is up to him to decide when to start hearing cases again. Garland was not immediately available to comment.

President-elect Donald Trump is gearing up to fill Scalia's seat in the new year. During the campaign he released a short list of potential nominees, and incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus said in a recent interview that Trump would be interviewing candidates soon.

According to the appeals court, Garland will be resuming all of his normal activities as a judge and as the chief judge of the court, a job that comes with other administrative responsibilities. As of this past week, he was still not participating in any cases; a court representative was not immediately available to comment on whether Garland would act on cases during the rest of December.

Senate Republicans opposed Garland’s nomination even before he became the nominee, arguing more broadly that Scalia’s seat shouldn’t be filled in an election year, and that the next president should pick the nominee. Garland never appeared for a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee — although he did submit a questionnaire to the committee.

While he was waiting, Garland did perform some of his administrative duties as chief judge, although he stopped handling judicial misconduct matters. He made the occasional public appearance to talk to lawyers and students, but never addressed the political controversy surrounding his nomination.

The first set of cases on Garland’s docket in January includes a fight over how much access the public should have to records in a court battle over the federal government’s designation of insurance giant MetLife as a "systemically important financial institution," a designation commonly referred to as "too big to fail" that triggers heightened government oversight and regulation. An advocacy group is challenging the judge’s decision to seal part of the record in that case.

Garland will also hear a labor case and a case alleging negligent treatment of a child who was in the District of Columbia’s custody.

Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Plan is pretty simple: respond to the criticism that Housing and Urban Development nominee Dr. Ben Carson lacks expertise by inundating him with housing policy in marathon briefing sessions, frame him as a doer from an inner-city with leadership experience, and embark on a listening tour across America after his confirmation.

But, so far, the process to prepare Carson for confirmation hearings next year has instead been preoccupied with internal politics, three sources said. Some Carson allies and people on the Trump transition team have concerns about the involved role of retired Major Gen. Robert Dees, who served as Carson’s campaign chair.

Throughout the Republican primary, Carson had a tight group of advisers — most prominently, Armstrong Williams — and influence with and proximity to Carson seem likely to be hotly contested. One source was led to believe that Dees was poised to become Carson’s chief of staff; another vehemently denied that. “Dees,” a source close to Carson said, “is coordinating everything.” An effort to reach Dees through a spokesperson was unsuccessful.

Confirming Carson, a popular figure within the Republican Party but one prone to at times highly unusual interviews, could prove one of the trickier nomination efforts, along with Rex Tillerson at the State Department. Democrats have been highly critical — Sen. Jeff Merkley said he was “deeply concerned” by the Carson pick — and if Carson were to have a difficult hearing, the unlikely possibility that a few Republicans might vote against him could become less unlikely.

“On the one hand, their problem right now is that he's not an advocate,” a nonpartisan observer familiar with the transition process said. “He’s not someone who’s known for fighting and expanding opportunity for black and brown communities. Even if you take out his lack of experience — it’s his presence and demeanor doesn't lend itself to either advocacy or knocking your socks off at that Senate hearing, you know, like his future boss said, he's low energy.”

The rancor around Carson’s nomination led at least one facilitator, DJ Nordquist, focused mostly on fighting the narrative that Carson was a bad choice. For his part, Carson is described by aides and colleagues as a notetaker who is grasping the policy and asking incisive questions. Alphonso Jackson, who ran the agency during George W. Bush’s second term, is among the aides helping Carson understand policies, urban issues, and dilemmas that the people HUD serves face everyday. If confirmed, the potential listening tour is viewed not just as an opportunity to put forward issues that Americans face, but also get Carson acclimated to that scope.

“Dr. Carson is spending time learning this stuff, and he’s passionate about it given where he came from,” a transition source said. “He sees it as an opportunity to create a pathway for others, for a lot of people who are struggling and looking for an opportunity to be upward mobile, and to make them feel empowered.”

Carson is also dealing with some people inside his circle and within the transition who don’t like the power shift over to Dees.

The devoutly religious retired Army officer (Dees has said his “greatest pleasure has been being a private in the Lord’s army”) earned Carson’s trust as a foreign policy adviser during the Republican primary. At times, he drew headlines in that role for previous comments in which he criticized federal “social engineering” in the military, specifically directives on gay and lesbian members, and women serving in combat roles. At Wildfire Weekend, an annual men’s evangelical retreat, he also spoke about 9/11, saying, “It’s not about these guys who came from way out, knocked down some buildings, and then have left. We have a serious internal issue. We’ve been infiltrated.” But during the primary, Dees reportedly helped Carson with foreign policy, something that the retired neurosurgeon was new to and at times visibly struggled with.

“This isn’t an area that he’s even been involved in — he’s never talked about poverty,” said a source inside Carson’s circle who asked for anonymity to speak openly, of Dees.

“He’s a friend who Dr. Carson respects,” another source close to Carson said. “It’s hard not to respect someone with that life experience. But it’s clear his focus are on things that they shouldn’t be on. It should be on policy, and getting Dr. Carson ready for this process. But he’s focusing on other things like this military general or that colonel getting into HUD. It makes you think he’s just not suited for the agency.”

Black Republicans in Washington are pleased with Trump’s pick, overall, and don’t believe he’ll have much trouble getting confirmed.

“He’s an unconventional choice, obviously,” said Gianno Caldwell, a Republican consultant with ties to the Carson camp. “He’s a surgeon and somebody who lived a life in the inner-city which I think affords him the opportunity to see things from a different lens outside of what we would normally see in a HUD secretary in a Republican administration.”

Caldwell said he believed Carson was looking to bring in “equipped hands” with housing policy experience, but that his involvement in the Trump cabinet won’t be just limited to housing. He said he expected Dr. Carson to serve as an adviser with a host of issues with respect to black Americans.

“The bigger thing for Mr. Trump and his administration, and he spoke about this on the stump, is renewing the black community’s faith in government and bringing about reforms that help communities rebuild,” Caldwell said. “And HUD is one way to help that agenda get passed.”

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump's New York campaign co-chair, Carl Paladino, said that his wish list for 2017 includes President Barack Obama dying from mad cow disease and First Lady Michelle Obama returning "to being a male" and going to live in Africa with a gorilla.

Paladino's comments were published by Buffalo, NY alternative weekly newspaper Art Voice on Friday in response to a set of questions posed to local politicians and business owners.

In response to what he would like most to happen in 2017, Paladino responded he would like that "Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her."

In addition to targeting the president and Jarrett, a senior adviser and friend to Obama, Paladino responded that he would like the first lady to be what goes away in 2017.

"I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla," Paladino's response said.

The Trump transition team provided a statement to news outlets including BuzzFeed News that distanced the president-elect from the comments Paladino made.

"Carl's comments are absolutely reprehensible, and they serve no place in our public discourse," the transition team's statement said.

Paladino has confirmed to news outlets he made the comments and denied that the comments were racist in a statement he sent to the Washington Post.

“It’s about 2 progressive elitist ingrates who have hated their country so badly and destroyed its fabric in so many respects in 8 years,” he said.

Paladino, who has requested that photos of the president-elect be hung in Buffalo schools, also confirmed that he is involved in Trump’s transition to the White House.

“I don't think Mr. Trump particularly cares what I have to say,” Paladino told the Post. “He knows me. I was active with him, and I still am active with him.”

Paladino, a Buffalo businessman who has a history of making controversial statements, once unsuccessfully ran for governor of New York. But his comments drew the ire of the current governor of New York.

In a tweet, Gov. Andrew Cuomo condemned Paladino's comments as "racist" and "ugly."

"Paladino has a long history of racist and incendiary comments. While most New Yorkers know Mr. Paladino is not to be taken seriously, as his erratic behavior defies any rational analysis and he has no credibility, his words are still jarring," read part of Cuomo's statement. "His remarks do not reflect the sentiments or opinions of any real New Yorker and he has embarrassed the good people of the state with his latest hate-filled rage."

Some of his fellow Western New Yorkers also spoke out against his comments.

“Mr. Paladino has done this in the past, so that was not surprising whatsoever. What was surprising, though, were the direct attacks on the president and on first lady in such demeaning ways, in such tone that many have described as ‘racist’ and as ‘sexist’,” said Barbara Seals Nevergold, president of the Buffalo Public Scools Board of Education (on which Paladino also serves), in a video posted to Twitter.

Editor of the Investigative Post Jim Heaney, in the same article where Paladino made his racist comments, said that Paladino is what he'd like to see go away in 2017.

"Carl Paladino. Enough, already," he wrote.

However, Jeff Mucciarelli, co-owner of Buffalo's 31 Club, said he'd like to see Paladino run for mayor in the upcoming year.

Paladino did not respond to a request for comment.

Protesters march during a demonstration against President-elect Donald Trump near Trump Tower in New York City on Dec. 12, 2016.

Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

The Women's March on Washington, a protest planned for the day after Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington, DC, has partnered with Planned Parenthood, writer Gloria Steinem, and Calypso musician and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte.

As honorary co-chairs, Belafonte and Steinem will attend the march, though their responsibilities beyond that are unclear. They may speak at the rally, though the official lineup has not been announced. Planned Parenthood will provide digital promotion, volunteers, and staff around the country, as well as event safety and security expertise. The Women's March plans to announce more partners in the new year.

According to Bob Bland, a co-chair of the march, one goal is to mobilize people on a local level with familiar organizations as well as at the event on Jan. 21. "Our partnerships will give people who attend a huge variety of organizations they recognize that they can volunteer for as we move forward. We'll be able to align regionally and nationally," she told BuzzFeed News.

The partnerships add recognizable figureheads to a movement in search of unity. Working with Planned Parenthood also signals a focus on abortion and access to women's health services as central to the march because of the health provider's reputation. Planned Parenthood is working with organizers on programming for the event itself, though the group's website also generally calls out environmental, LGBT, and racial issues. It has not issued an official policy platform, Bland said, but it plans to do so in the new year.

The group has not shared plans to focus on specific policies, but has said the event is pro-women rather than anti-Trump. In a statement to BuzzFeed News, organizers said the march "is a display of solidarity affirming our shared humanity and fundamental human rights."

"We will send a strong message to the incoming administration that millions of people across this country are prepared to fight attacks on reproductive health care, abortion services, and access to Planned Parenthood, as they intersect with the rights of young people, people of color, immigrants, and people of all faiths, backgrounds, and incomes," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement.

The event has four official co-chairs: Tamika Mallory, a former executive director of the National Action Network; Linda Sarsour, an executive director of the Arab American Association of New York; Carmen Perez, an executive director of The Gathering for Justice; and Bob Bland, CEO and founder of Manufacture New York. March organizers have emphasized the intersectionality and diversity of their protest.

"Together we are bridging the historical struggles for women’s rights and civil rights to the current intersectional movement for dignity and human rights," Sarsour said in a statement about Steinem's and Belafonte's involvement.

The march began as a Facebook event and rose to national prominence as 155,000 people said they would attend and almost 240,000 more indicated they were interested.

March volunteers will be busing demonstrators to Washington from around the country for the protest. The event itself will begin at 10 a.m. near the US Capitol at the intersection of Independence Avenue and Third Street SW.

Women's March organizers expect 30 other cities across the US to also hold protest events.

Don Emmert / AFP / Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to influence immigration enforcement, environmental regulation, and civil rights from his first day in office, and he won’t need to propose legislation or sign executive orders to do it.

By the time Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20, there will be more than 100 vacant judgeships across the federal courts. Trump can begin to name nominees for those seats once he takes office — the number of vacancies equals about 12 percent of all active federal judgeships, far more than Presidents George W. Bush or Obama had to fill at the start of their presidencies.

It’s an immediate opportunity for Trump to leave a legacy that would last for decades, and one that Republicans don’t want him to squander.

“A very large number of those circuit courts of appeals flipped during the Obama years, and certainly from the conservatives’ perspective it would be nice to flip some or all of those back,” said John Malcolm, director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “That’s going to take time. President Obama had eight years.”

The US Supreme Court gets the most attention, with justices who can set new precedent that immediately affects the whole nation — but the vast majority of cases never make it that far. Lower federal courts are where most cases are resolved. Democrats criticized Obama for not acting fast enough naming nominees to US district and appeals courts during his first term, setting the stage for Republicans to block dozens of nominees in his final years in office. It’s a scenario Republicans want to avoid.

Trump’s priority is getting a nominee confirmed to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February, on the Supreme Court, and that’s expected to dominate the White House and Senate’s judicial agenda early on. Still, Malcolm said the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups are already tapping their networks to identify potential lower court nominees to suggest to the new administration.

There are open seats for Trump to fill on eight of the thirteen courts of appeals. These courts set precedent in the absence of a Supreme Court decision on a particular issue, and interpret and apply Supreme Court rulings with important practical effects.

"Coming out of this election where the courts were so high on everyone’s radar, I hope this administration is going to take it very seriously."

Senate Republicans succeeded in blocking Obama’s nominees to three of the four appeals courts that still have a majority of Republican-appointed active judges — the US Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Circuits, which cover a broad swath of the middle of the country, from the mouth of the Mississippi River up through the Midwest. Trump can grow the conservative blocs on those courts, which all have vacancies, right away.

Trump can also narrow the gap between Republican and Democrat-appointed active judges on two appeals courts with several vacancies: the Second Circuit, which covers New York, Connecticut, and Vermont and handles high-profile cases involving the financial industry; and the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Virgin Islands.

To Republicans’ dismay, there are no vacancies for Trump to fill right away on the DC Circuit, a politically significant court that hears challenges to executive branch actions. Obama and Senate Democrats successfully fought to put four relatively young judges on that bench, and Democrat-appointed active judges hold a solid majority.

Federal judges, protective of their independence, bristle at the notion that the politics of the president who appointed them determines how they’ll rule. Lawyers agree that in most cases, a judge’s political background isn’t a factor.

But if Trump picks nominees whose judicial philosophy aligns with the conservative Scalia’s — Trump’s rubric for his Supreme Court nominee — courts could start to shift to the right on issues where Republican and Democratic appointees historically have split: the scope of government regulation, labor, voting rights, and the power of police and prosecutors, for instance.

“Coming out of this election where the courts were so high on everyone’s radar, I hope this administration is going to take it very seriously,” said Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network.

The wild-card factor

Trump’s transition team hasn’t announced who will be in charge of judicial nominations. Transition officials did not return a request for comment. Lawyers familiar with previous presidential changeovers said that Trump’s intended White House counsel, Don McGahn II, is likely brainstorming options for the lower courts, especially the courts of appeals, even as the administration gets ready to announce a Supreme Court nominee.

"I’m curious whether ... it’s going to be something radically different."

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s intended US attorney general nominee, as well as the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society, are expected to play an influential role on judicial nominations. Heritage and the Federalist Society helped shape Trump’s list of 21 Supreme Court candidates, and Federalist Society executive vice president Leonard Leo met with Trump shortly after the election to discuss the Supreme Court.

Severino, of the Judicial Crisis Network, said her group is prepared to mobilize to support Trump’s judicial nominees. JCN released ads this year opposing Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, DC Circuit Chief Judge Merrick Garland, and recently launched a six-figure digital ad campaign supporting Sessions. Severino declined to comment on whether she’d been in communication with Trump’s transition team.

Presidents of both parties historically have tapped certain pipelines for federal judgeships — former prosecutors, partners at large law firms, and, for appeals court seats, judges already serving on state and federal trial courts. For the US district courts, the White House has largely deferred to the preferences of home state senators.

Trump, however, pledged to upend traditional systems in Washington. It’s not clear yet whether that “drain the swamp” cry will extend to the usual processes in picking court nominees.

“I’m curious whether we’re going to see the types of judges with the types of qualifications and backgrounds that we have seen in the past from presidents of both parties, or whether it’s going to be something radically different,” said Scott Chesin, a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown in New York.

Cases against the government

Judicial nominees for trial-level courts tend to be less politically controversial, but there are open seats that could prove important for Trump as he pursues his agenda.

There are six open seats on the US Court of Federal Claims. Unlike the US district and circuit courts, where judges have lifetime appointments, Federal Claims judges serve 15-year terms. Known as the “People’s Court,” the Court of Federal Claims hears fights against the government over federal contracts, seizures of private property, and tax appeals. Hundreds of millions of dollars can be at stake in these cases.

Republicans blocked Obama’s five nominees to that court. Sen. Tom Cotton — who previously worked at a law firm, Cooper & Kirk, that represents companies in the Court of Federal Claims — questioned whether the court needed more judges given its caseload, and why more cases weren’t being assigned to senior judges.

Democrats accused Republicans of opposing Obama’s nominees to preserve a conservative majority on the bench. Republican appointees are considered more sympathetic to private industry in cases against the government.

Asked if Cotton would continue to oppose filling the vacancies, a spokesperson for the senator told BuzzFeed News in an email that he “will continue to evaluate the caseload of the Court of Federal Claims and ensure that taxpayer dollars are used prudently.”

Lewis Wiener, a partner at the law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan in Washington and a former president of the Court of Federal Claims Bar Association, disagrees with Cotton’s assessment of the court’s caseload and the need for more judges. The vacancies are “acutely” felt and are slowing down cases, he said.

“When the legislative branch is doing what it is doing and has been doing, to interfere with the administration of the judiciary, you really risk that balance of power which is a bedrock principle of our constitution,” Wiener said.

Should Trump go forward with filling the vacancies, Hamish Hume, a partner at the law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner in Washington who practices in the Court of Federal Claims, said he didn’t expect Trump to renominate Obama’s nominees.

“It’s regrettable how politicized our judiciary has become. At some level that’s going to become very hard to undo. The most important thing in light of that politicization is to not let it detract from the fact that we want highly qualified people with a diversity of backgrounds,” Hume said.

Trump also will inherit vacancies for three seats on the US District Court for the District of Columbia, a major forum for lawsuits over federal agency actions and public records requests. Appeals from that court go to the DC Circuit.

There are 11 vacancies across the district courts in Texas, which have heavy immigration dockets and have handled challenges to Obama's executive actions on immigration and other federal regulations and policies. In addition, there are three seats on the Eastern District of New York, known for handling a variety of terrorism and white collar crime cases.

Sen. Chuck Grassley

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

An uphill fight for Democrats

Democrats and liberal advocacy groups are mobilizing to fight Trump’s nominees, but with Republicans in control of the Senate, Democrats will have limited opportunities to block them — particularly the lower court judges — from being confirmed.

Under changes to Senate rules put in place in 2013 when Democrats were in control, it only takes a simple majority in the Senate to defeat a filibuster and move a nominee for the district and appeals courts forward. A 60-vote majority is still required to break a filibuster on a Supreme Court nominee, although there is speculation Republicans would change that to a simple majority vote as well if Democrats try to block Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

Under a system known as the “blue slip” process, the Senate Judiciary Committee won’t act on a nominee unless the home state senators return a piece of paper with their approval. The blue slip process has long served as a negotiating tool for senators in opposition to the president, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley will continue to honor it, according to a spokesperson.

Civil rights and liberal advocacy groups say they’ll launch public advocacy campaigns to oppose nominees they object to, but the left hasn’t been as centrally organized as conservatives when it comes to the courts, said Robert Raben of lobbying and policy firm The Raben Group, a former lawyer at the Justice Department and on Capitol Hill who works as a strategist with liberal groups. There is no left-wing equivalent of the Judicial Crisis Network, he said.

Looking at Trump’s list of Supreme Court candidates, Democrats have an idea of the types of judges the president-elect could choose for the lower courts and are doing research on potential nominees, Raben said. They’re also waiting to see who Trump picks to take the lead on judicial nominations, he said.

“We really have an interesting infrastructure mismatch on the left and right,” Raben said. “That said, we are of course organizing.”

The death chamber at the Southern Ohio Corrections Facility in Lucasville, Ohio.

Kiichiro Sato / AP

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that Ohio can keep information about its execution drug supplier a secret in litigation challenging the state's execution procedures.

In the 2-1 ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Judge Eugene Siler wrote that a district court judge had not abused his discretion in shielding the state from having to turn over information about its execution drug suppliers to the death row inmates who are challenging the state's lethal injection process. Judge Alan Norris joined Siler's opinion for the court.

The ruling comes as Ohio is attempting to restart executions in the coming year after a several-year gap. Ohio has not held an execution since it put Dennis McGuire to death in January 2014. One witness to the execution described how McGuire "struggled and gasped audibly for air" even after the procedure began.

Ohio has since changed its protocol — although it will continue to use the controversial sedative, midazolam, that has been the subject of litigation — and is aiming to hold an execution as soon as Feb. 15. (A hearing on that new protocol is set for Jan. 3.)

Siler wrote that the district court was not wrong to grant the order protecting the identity of drug suppliers after finding there would be a "particularized harm to the drug manufacturers and Ohio’s capability to perform executions" if the information was turned over to the inmates as part of their lawsuit.

"As the district court’s findings support, but for the protective order, Defendants will suffer an undue burden and prejudice in effectuating Ohio’s execution protocol and practices," he continued.

The appeals court in November had upheld a constitutional challenge to Ohio's execution secrecy law itself. The question before the court in Friday's ruling was whether the state could avoid having to turn over such information in federal court litigation.

"Although knowledge of the facilities and handlers of the drugs could inform Plaintiffs’ testing methodologies, the harm presented by identification of those intimately involved in an execution outweighs the speculative benefit of complete understanding of an industry already heavily regulated," the court concluded, upholding the validity of the protective order.

Judge Jane Stranch dissented, writing that the district court had not properly followed the federal rules regarding when evidence must be turned over to opposing parties in litigation. She found the alleged harm the state and anonymous drug suppliers presented to the court regarding risk of harassment and violence to be "too speculative to validate this protective order."

In detailing the claims presented by the state, Stranch took particular aim at the state's "threat assessment" expert, Lawrence Cunningham, who was the subject of a BuzzFeed News investigation earlier this year.

"Cunningham’s testimony was undoubtedly speculative. His methods for determining whether there was a security risk consisted mainly of surfing the internet, and attempting to extrapolate the existence of potential threats in the death penalty arena by looking at advocacy regarding other issues: abortion, animal rights, and the morning-after pill," she wrote. "Cunningham himself stated that he was unaware of any known threat against anyone involved in implementation of the death penalty in Ohio, and unaware of threats against any compounding pharmacy that supplies Ohio."

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and President Obama

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Texas on Saturday issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of Obama administration protections for transgender and abortion-related healthcare services just one day before they were due to go into effect.

The lawsuit — brought by Texas, a handful of other states, and some religiously affiliated nonprofit medical groups — challenges a regulation implementing the sex nondiscrimination requirement found in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation "forbids discriminating on the basis of 'gender identity' and 'termination of pregnancy'" under Obamacare, as US District Court Judge Reed O'Connor wrote in his opinion halting enforcement of those provisions in the rule.

Explaining the lawsuit, O'Connor wrote, "Plaintiffs claim the Rule's interpretation of sex discrimination pressures doctors to deliver healthcare in a manner that violates their religious freedom and thwarts their independent medical judgment and will require burdensome changes to their health insurance plans on January 1, 2017."

The states and nonprofits in the healthcare lawsuit allege that the regulation violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) — which sets the rules for federal government rule-making — and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

O'Connor found that the plaintiffs had standing to bring the lawsuit because they "have presented concrete evidence to support their fears that they will be subject to enforcement under the Rule."

The White House defended the administration's policies on Saturday night.

"Today's decision is a setback, but hopefully a temporary one, since all Americans — regardless of their sex, gender identity or sexual orientation — should have access to quality, affordable health care free from discrimination," White House spokesperson Katie Hill told BuzzFeed News.

The next steps from the administration could include seeking to appeal the injunction or asking O’Connor to limit his order to the plaintiffs in the case, although it was not clear — with 20 days left in the Obama administration — what the government would choose to do.

HHS spokesperson Marjorie Connolly, in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News, did not address any specific next steps as to the transgender or abortion-related protections, saying, "We are disappointed by the court's decision to preliminarily enjoin certain important protections against unlawful sex discrimination in our health care system. Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act is critical to ensuring that individuals, including some of our most vulnerable populations, do not suffer discrimination in the health care and health coverage they receive."

She did, however, note that the reminder of the nondiscrimination protections under the ACA remain in effect, saying, "We will continue to enforce the law — including its important protections against discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, or disability and its provisions aimed at enhancing language assistance for people with limited English proficiency, as well as other sex discrimination provisions — to the full extent consistent with the court's order."

O'Connor is the same trial court judge assigned to a lawsuit brought by several states, again led by Texas, challenging the Obama administration's transgender protections in schools provided under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

In August, O'Connor issued a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of the Obama administration's schools guidance because he found it was not permitted under Title IX. (The administration is challenging the nationwide scope of the injunction at the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.)

Because Title IX is referenced as providing the interpretation of the ACA's sex discrimination ban, O'Connor found, accordingly, that "HHS's expanded definition of sex discrimination exceeds the [Title IX] grounds" provided for in the ACA, making that provision contrary to law and a violation of the APA.

O'Connor similarly found that the rule's failure to include the religious exemptions found in Title IX similarly "renders it contrary to law."

The judge also found a "substantial likelihood" that the states and nonprofits would succeed in their RFRA claim.

O'Connor found that because "numerous" other options were available to the government for "expand[ing] access to transition and abortion procedures," the rule is not the "least restrictive means" of advancing that interest — as required by RFRA.

Notably, O'Connor also questioned strongly whether the government even showed that the rule "advances a compelling interest," as required by RFRA, but assumed that it did so because he had found the rule had not met the "least restrictive means" prong of RFRA either.

Because the rule affects "almost all licensed physicians" and one of the nonprofit groups — the Christian Medical and Dental Associations — has members across the country, O'Connor found that a nationwide injunction halting enforcement of the transgender and abortion-related provisions in the rule was appropriate.

LINK: Texas Leads Four Other States, Nonprofits In Lawsuit Over Transgender Health Rule

LINK: Federal Judge Blocks Obama Administration Protections For Transgender People

WASHINGTON — The NAACP is staging a sit-in at Sen. Jeff Sessions' office in Mobile, Alabama, to protest his nomination as US attorney general, saying they will not leave until Sessions withdraws his nomination or the protesters are arrested.

NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, joined by activists from Alabama, held a press conference outside Sessions' office midday Tuesday before proceeding inside. Brooks tweeted a photo of himself and other protesters seated on the floor.

The NAACP has also been live-streaming the demonstration inside Sessions' office on Facebook. A woman who answered the phone at the Mobile office referred questions about the sit-in to Sessions' press office in Washington. A spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.

According to a spokeswoman for the Mobile Police Department, no arrests have been made so far.

Sessions, a former federal and state prosecutor in Alabama and a US senator since 1997, is scheduled to appear for confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 10 and 11. Republicans announced on Tuesday that Sessions will no longer sit on the Judiciary Committee.

The NAACP is one of many civil rights groups that oppose Sessions as the next attorney general. Sessions' nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986 failed after allegations surfaced that he made racist comments while he was a US attorney in Alabama. One of his former colleagues reported at the time that Sessions had called the NAACP "un-American."

Sessions acknowledged making some of the comments at issue, but said he had been quoted out of context or that certain remarks — such as that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was okay until he learned its members used marijuana — were meant as a joke. He denied accusations of racism.

In a statement released in anticipation of Tuesday's protests, Brooks said that Sessions couldn't be "trusted" to enforce voting rights.

Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, said in a statement that Sessions has "been a threat to desegregation and the Voting Rights Act and remains a threat to all of our civil rights, including the right to live without the fear of police brutality."

The NAACP held protest events on Tuesday at Sessions' fives offices in Alabama.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has no plans to settle his lawsuit against a celebrity chef who pulled out of opening a restaurant in one of Trump's hotels, a lawyer for the Trump Organization told a judge on Tuesday.

Trump is suing restaurateur Geoffrey Zakarian, who canceled a deal for a restaurant in Trump's hotel in downtown Washington after Trump made disparaging comments about Mexicans and immigrants at a campaign event in 2015.

Trump has resolved several lawsuits that involve his eponymous companies since the election in November. But Rebecca Woods, a lawyer in Washington representing the Trump Organization in the lawsuit against Zakarian, told a DC Superior Court judge on Tuesday that mediation had been unsuccessful so far and that the two sides had reached an "impasse."

The lawyer representing Zakarian's company, Deborah Baum, said she agreed with Woods.

A bench trial before DC Superior Court Judge Brian Holeman could take place by the end of 2017. No trial date has been set, but the parties are due back in court on May 17 for a pretrial hearing.

The Trump Organization is pursuing multiple cases in Superior Court related to the DC hotel. Trump is suing restaurateur Jose Andrés, who, like Zakarian, pulled out of plans for a restaurant at the hotel because of Trump's campaign remarks about immigrants.

Trump accused Zakarian and Andrés of breaching their contracts. The chefs say that Trump broke the deal with his campaign comments, arguing that his remarks imperiled the future success of the restaurants.

Trump also is challenging taxes assessed by the District of Columbia on the hotel property, which Trump is leasing from the US General Services Administration.

Trump during the campaign spoke about his aversion to settling lawsuits, but since the election he's done just that. In November, Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits that accused the now-defunct Trump University of fraud. Trump tweeted at the time that he thought he could have won the cases, but agreed to settle in order to "focus on our country."

Trump last month resolved disputes with labor unions representing workers at his Las Vegas hotel, and dropped a case in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit challenging a finding by the National Labor Relations Board of labor law violations.

But the suits against Zakarian and Andrés press on. Last month, the judge in the Andrés case denied Trump's request to stop Andrés' lawyers from questioning him. The deposition is slated to take place next week in New York. Trump was already deposed by Zakarian's lawyers over the summer.

A pretrial court hearing in the Andrés case is scheduled for March 7.

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

Omarosa Manigault, a contestant on the first season of Donald Trump's The Apprentice, is going to work in the next White House.

Manigault will work on public engagement in the upcoming Trump administration, the Associated Press reported. A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for additional information.

Manigault first appeared on The Apprentice in 2004. In 2008, she appeared on the show's spinoff, Celebrity Apprentice, where she was fired in the 10th episode. She subsequently went on to appear in various other reality shows, including The Ultimate Merger, a dating show that Trump executive produced, and another season of Celebrity Apprentice.

In summer 2016, Manigault began doing outreach to black voters for Trump, and joined his transition team last month. She previously worked for Al Gore during the Clinton administration.

Now, President-elect Donald Trump thinks the "intelligence" briefing delay on "Russian hacking" is "very strange."

Trump suggested in a tweet Tuesday night that the delay was to give the intelligence community more time to "build a case."

The implication confused many intelligence officials, who said that there was no delay and that the briefing had been originally scheduled for Friday, according to the Associated Press.

In the months leading up to and following the election, the Obama administration has accused Russia of facilitating the hacking in order to influence the outcome of the election.

In an interview on Fox News’ Hannity that was filmed at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, anchor Sean Hannity asked Assange if the Russian government or anybody affiliated with it gave WikiLeaks emails.

“Our source is not a state party,” Assange said. “The answer, for our interactions, is no.”

He also emphasized the ease with which former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails could have been hacked, given how open he had been with his password information.

“There’s a number of hacks [of] the DNC and Podesta — based on the publicly available information because it’s not coming from our sources — we published as part of our policy of full disclosure and not interfering with the material,” Assange said. “We published several Podesta emails which shows Podesta responding to a phishing email,” Assange said.

“Now, how did they respond? Podesta gave out that his password was the word ‘password.’ His own staff said, ‘This email you’ve received? This is totally legitimate,’” he said.

“This is something that a 14-year-old, a 14-year-old kid could have hacked,” he said.

On Wednesday, Vice President-elect Mike Pence said that Trump "has expressed his very sincere and healthy American skepticism about intelligence conclusions."

He added that "given some of the intelligence failures of recent years, the President elect made it clear to the American people that he is skeptical about conclusions."

When asked whether he considered Assange a credible source, Pence did not answer and moved on to the next question.

Kellyanne Conway, the president-elect's incoming White House counselor, said on CNBC Tuesday night that people "should pay significant attention to that because [Assange] knows the source of the emails that he received."

Trump responded Wednesday morning with a tweet asking why the DNC could be so "careless."

Watch Assange's full interview on Hannity here.