“We need more direct relief flowing to families, small businesses, including finishing the job of getting people that $2,000 in relief direct payment—$600 is simply not enough,” he said.

Mr. Biden also pointed to historically low interest rates and the Federal Reserve’s limited ability to support credit to small businesses and municipalities as reasons to tolerate higher deficit spending to support economic growth.

you should be investing significant amounts of money right now to grow the economy,

Mr. Biden also said Mr. Trump was unfit to serve as president and that it was a good thing he wasn’t planning on attending his Jan. 20 inauguration. He said he would welcome Vice President Mike Pence to the event.

Mr. Trump said on Twitter hours before Mr. Biden’s appearance that he would not attend, breaking precedent with past outgoing presidents.

Mr. Biden also praised Republicans like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for standing up to the president’s efforts to overturn the election result. Mr. Biden said Wednesday’s riot made his job of unifying the country easier in some ways since some Republicans were distancing themselves from Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Trump’s character flaws were apparent for all to see when he ran for President.

The related but separate question is whether impeachment or forced removal under the 25th Amendment now is in the country’s best interests.

The best case for impeachment is not to punish Mr. Trump. It is to send a message to future Presidents that Congress will protect itself from populists of all ideological stripes willing to stir up a mob and threaten the Capitol or its Members.

After Wednesday he has promised to assist an “orderly transition” of power. A Cabinet cabal ousting him would smack of a Beltway coup and give Mr. Trump more cause to play the political victim.

But impeachment so late in the term won’t be easy or without rancor. It would further enrage Mr. Trump’s supporters in a way that won’t help Mr. Biden govern, much less heal partisan divisions. It would pour political fuel on Wednesday’s dying embers.

and Mr. Trump would play it as such until his last breath. Mr. Biden could gain much goodwill if he called off the impeachers in the name of stepping back from annihilationist politics.

If Mr. Trump wants to avoid a second impeachment, his best path would be to take personal responsibility and resign. This would be the cleanest solution since it would immediately turn presidential duties over to Mr. Pence. And it would give Mr. Trump agency, a la Richard Nixon, over his own fate.

We know an act of grace by Mr. Trump isn’t likely. In any case this week has probably finished him as a serious political figure. He has cost Republicans the House, the White House, and now the Senate. Worse, he has betrayed his loyal supporters by lying to them about the election and the ability of Congress and Mr. Pence to overturn it. He has refused to accept the basic bargain of democracy, which is to accept the result, win or lose. It is best for everyone, himself included, if he goes away quietly.

The three people had expressed their backing of President Trump and posted repeatedly about their belief that the election had been stolen. Two had arrest records.

In late November, Mr. Greeson posted a photo of himself with two guns and the caption, “I wish these motherf--kers would come to my hood!” He also repeatedly criticized the Republican Party for what he saw as its insufficient efforts to help Mr. Trump. “Our President is being took out of office in coup and you motherf--kers do nothing!!” he wrote. “It might take a few years but Trump and the American people will take you f--ks out of your office.”

She posted repeatedly on Facebook in support of Mr. Trump and his false assertions that the election was stolen.

“Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me,” the posts said. They added: “We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED!”

Twitter removed those new tweets from the @POTUS account soon after they were posted, saying the move was consistent with its policy against using other accounts to try to evade a suspension. “For government accounts, such as @POTUS and @WhiteHouse, we will not suspend those accounts permanently but will take action to limit their use,” a Twitter representative said.

Twitter and Facebook’s actions to shut off two of the largest megaphones Mr. Trump has relied on for years to communicate with the public highlights the difficult position social-media platforms face in regulating controversial content on their platforms.

Mr. Trump had more than 88 million followers on Twitter and more than 35 million on Facebook.

Google said it acted because of “continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the U.S.,” which violated its requirements for sufficient moderation of egregious content for apps it distributes.

“In light of this ongoing and urgent public safety threat, we are suspending the app’s listings from the Play Store until it addresses these issues,” a Google representative said.

Mr. Trump had tweeted three times since regaining account access Thursday. In his first post, he tweeted a video condemning the violence at the Capitol and acknowledging that a new administration would be inaugurated Jan. 20, without specifically naming Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

Mr. Trump won more than 74 million votes, seven million less than Joe Biden received.

“These two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks.”

Twitter earlier Friday shut off the accounts of Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who worked alongside Mr. Trump’s legal team. The company also said Friday that it suspended several accounts associated with the far-right conspiracy group QAnon for violating its policy on coordinated harmful activity.

“the world’s largest social media companies finally do the right thing and deplatform the inciter-in-chief before another person is killed or another cherished piece of our democracy is violated.”

Excluding the District of Columbia force, each National Guard group is under the control of its respective state or territorial governor. The D.C. National Guard operates under federal control at all times.

Excluding the District of Columbia force, each National Guard group is under the control of its respective state or territorial governor. The D.C. National Guard operates under federal control at all times

tate governors can call branches of the National Guard into action during local or statewide emergencies, including natural disasters and civil disturbances. The president can activate the National Guard for participation in federal missions in the U.S. and abroad.

National Guard units can be ordered into federal service, in which case control of the mobilized units passes from the respective governors to the president

“homeland defense activities”

Presidents Trump, Obama and Bush deployed National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

ore than 250,000 people from the National Guard served in the U.S. wars in Afghanistan or Iraq

The National Guard has long participated in disaster-relief operations such as those following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and its troops provided security at airports around the country after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“As a historian, I have always believed in the power of peaceful protest.” He added, “Demonstrations give us a glimpse of the fragility of our democracy and why the work we do and the stories we tell are so important.”

“Two hundred and twenty years after Jefferson was sworn in as president, the vulnerability of this legal and historic handover was revealed,” she said. “While shaken, we remain confident that a peaceful transfer of power shall yet again occur Jan. 20.

And some could face more serious charges, including in the death of Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who was overpowered by rioters who, according to two law enforcement officials, struck his head with a fire extinguisher. He was rushed to the hospital and died on Thursday.

He also rebutted the notion of any involvement in the violence by left-wing antifascist agitators, whom Mr. Trump’s supporters have falsely tried to blame.

“The goal here is to identify people and get them,” Mr. Kohl said.The Washington police have also arrested dozens, mostly on charges of unlawful entry and curfew violations.

One of the most serious federal cases involved Lonnie L. Coffman of Falkville, Ala. In the bed of his truck, officers found what they described as an M4 assault rifle and magazines loaded with ammunition. They also found rags, lighters and 11 glass Mason jars filled with a liquid later identified as gasoline.

The images of Mr. Barnett were “shocking” and “repulsive,” said Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general.

Prosecutors charged the leader and founder of the Hawaii chapter of the far-right Proud Boys group, Nicholas Robert Ochs, with unlawful entry after he posted a picture on Twitter from the Capitol and told a CNN reporter that he had gone inside.

A pair of pipe bombs found on Wednesday afternoon outside the Democratic and Republican Party headquarters, blocks from the Capitol, contained crude mechanical timing devices, according to an official familiar with their initial examination, suggesting they were intended to be detonated. It was not clear when they were meant to explode.

Other close allies of the president made similar comments at the rally. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said that Republicans should back Mr. Trump’s efforts to undo the election result or face consequences. “We’re coming for you,” he said.

Incitement of a riot is a misdemeanor crime in Washington that carries up to 180 days in prison or a $1,000 fine, but the maximum sentence increases to 10 years if victims suffer serious bodily harm or serious property damage occurs.

Hunger is stronger than fear.

Undocumented immigrants contribute more than $11 billion a year in state and local taxes. Immigrants are an essential part of our multiethnic, multicultural society.

As long as there aren’t enough Covid-19 vaccines for everyone, it’s unlikely the Biden administration will allow a massive influx of refugees and asylum seekers into the country. These months of vaccine scarcity will hopefully provide the administration the time it needs to formulate and execute a new immigration policy that can address the crisis.

If he wants to be the anti-Trump president, Mr. Biden will have to resolve this situation promptly and humanely.

The administration has a long list of promises to fulfill in its first 100 days, from legalizing America’s approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants and protecting Dreamers to granting temporary protected status to the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States who escaped Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

But before the Biden administration can address the challenge of new migrant caravans heading north, it will have to deal with the tens of thousands of asylum seekers, mostly Central Americans, already stranded in Mexico along the U.S. border.

They’ll also have to deal with the unauthorized immigrants who have been in the United States for decades, waiting for their status to be regularized.

Good leaders are defined by how they treat the most vulnerable in their charge, not the wealthiest or most powerful. And immigrants are, by far, the most vulnerable.

American protesters wanted to overturn an election; Germany’s wanted to overturn a set of policies. And most importantly, while some far-right populist politicians backed the Berlin demonstrations, they did not have the support of the country’s leader.

What connects the protesters on both sides of the Atlantic is a deep distrust in officials and a belief in conspiracy theories. In fact, many in both countries believe in the same conspiracy theories. The QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that President Trump will defend the world from a vast network of Satanists and pedophiles, is shockingly popular with many in Germany’s anti-lockdown movement, as it is with the president’s fiercest partisans at home.

The similarity that struck me most, however, was how aimless and lost some of the rioters both in Berlin and Washington appeared to be once they had reached their target

Is this their revolution? A bunch of selfies?

It seems like protesters on both sides of the Atlantic long for some sort of control, and want to assert their power over legislative headquarters that they see as representative of their oppression. But all they get in the end is a cheap social media surrogate

Political compromise, and ultimately, reconciliation, starts with recognition. But real-world politics cannot follow those who become believers in their alternate realities. A different strategy is needed.

Instead, to protect our democracies, we must watch them, contain them, and take away their guns.

“The violent insurrection was an attack on the caucus, the Congress, the country and the Constitution that was incited and facilitated by Donald Trump,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the caucus chairman, said on the call. “He must be held accountable for his actions.”

But some Defense Department officials have privately expressed anger that political leaders seemed to be trying to get the Pentagon to do the work of Congress and Cabinet secretaries, who have legal options to remove a president.

Mr. Trump, they noted, is still the commander in chief, and unless he is removed, the military is bound to follow his lawful orders. While military officials can refuse to carry out orders they view as illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.

in of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.

During an appearance in Wilmington, Del., on Friday, Mr. Biden did not weigh in on plans to impeach Mr. Trump, saying, “What the Congress decides to do is for them to decide.”

Mr. Pence was said to be opposed to doing so

Democrats were rushing to begin the expedited proceeding two days after the president rallied his supporters near the White House, urging them to go to the Capitol to protest his election defeat, then continuing to stoke their grievances as they stormed the edifice — with Mr. Pence and the entire Congress meeting inside to formalize Mr. Biden’s victory — in a rampage that left an officer and a member of the mob dead. (Three others died, including one woman who was crushed in the crowd, and two men who had medical emergencies on the Capitol grounds.)

Just a day after he voted twice to overturn Mr. Biden’s legitimate victory in key swing states, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, urged both parties to “lower the temperature” and said he would reach out to Mr. Biden about uniting the country. Though he did not defend Mr. Trump, he argued that seeking to remove him would not help.

At least some Republicans appeared newly open to the possibility, which could also disqualify Mr. Trump from holding political office in the future.

“He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution — he acted against that,” Mr. Sasse said on CBS. “What he did was wicked.”

“Whatever votes sent from the state are accepted by the joint session.”

The House has been conducting business through proxy voting, in which one lawmaker may ask a lawmaker who is physically present to vote on his or her behalf. If the organizing resolution for the new Congress permits proxy voting, then members may vote by proxy.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R., Ala.) has said that he plans to challenge the results from several states, with the vote tallies in Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania of most concern. He has said that Republicans numbering “in the double digits” are joining the effort.

LinkedIn

On Saturday, 11 current and incoming Republican senators said they would vote to reject on Wednesday the Electoral College votes of some states as not “lawfully certified” unless Congress appoints a commission to conduct an emergency, 10-day audit of the election results.

But the Republican senators didn’t say which states they had in mind or assert that they would mount their own objections in writing.

If Mr. Pence faces objections to any state’s votes, it likely will be his job to stop debate if an objection draws only support from one chamber of Congress—falling short of the requirement that at least one House lawmaker and one senator sign on. As president of the Senate, Mr. Pence in theory also could break any ties should the Senate need to vote. There is no precedent that limits the ability of the vice president to break a tie, according to Ms. Binder.

Mr. Trump has vetoed eight other bills during his time in the White House, with several of them focused on foreign policy and national-security issues, such as U.S. military activity in Yemen, the use of force against Iran, and arms sales to Saudi Arabia. While Republicans had joined Democrats to initially pass those measures, supporters couldn’t muster enough GOP votes to override the vetoes from a Republican president.

Congress has passed a version of the NDAA every year for decades, and it has been one of the most popular pieces of legislation on Capitol Hill. Several other presidents in recent history—including Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton —have vetoed an NDAA, according to the Senate Historical Office. In those instances, Congress modified the bill and the president later signed it.

After Congress pulled together a bipartisan NDAA bill this fall, Mr. Trump repeatedly threatened to veto it

A push to increase the size of direct payments in the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill slowed the process in the Senate, though, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) prevented leadership from fast-tracking the NDAA vote without a vote on increasing the payments. Mr. Sanders had taken up a request from Mr. Trump to increase the size of the payments to $2,000, up from $600. Republicans have repeatedly blocked a stand-alone vote on that proposal.

In addition to creating a commission for removing or changing names of bases, symbols, displays, monuments and paraphernalia honoring Confederate commanders, the bill also limits the president’s authority to use emergency military construction funds. Other measures in the legislation include requiring companies in the U.S. to register their true owners and restricting employees or former employees of the defense-industrial base from working directly for Chinese government-owned or -controlled companies.

A 3% mortgage might end up in a 2% pool. That’s because to further standardize the loan, parts of the interest go to pay for other transformation services.

In an economy where lots of people are missing payments, that can bite. The surge in payment deferrals during the pandemic, for example, fell hard on servicers.

A big way rate risk manifests is that speed at which people prepay. This in turn can affect what investors are willing to pay, because securities derived from those mortgages essentially become shorter-lived. So even as originators enjoy the benefits of volume when lots of people are refinancing, they might earn less when selling mortgages. Of course, when the Federal Reserve is buying mortgage securities, and when rates on other fixed-income assets are so low, originators’ profits selling mortgages can remain quite large.

In the House, where a band of conservatives has been plotting the last-ditch election objection for weeks, more than half of Republicans joined a failed lawsuit seeking to overturn the results, and more are expected to support the effort to challenge the results in Congress on Wednesday.

Mr. Cruz, who declined to be interviewed for this article, described his thinking on Fox News, saying he did not want his voters to believe he was not interested in investigating allegations of election fraud.

“It’s a protest vote only, because there’s, in my opinion, zero chance that anything can come from it,” Mr. Braun told reporters. “The House obviously is not going to vote to overturn. I don’t think you’d even get close in the Senate. So mostly, it remains for many of us, a way to express your opinion.”

Mr. Lankford said on Sunday that his intention was to make a “statement” to his voters who believe Mr. Trump won and the election was rigged.

“None of us want to vote against electors, but we all want to get the facts out there,” Mr. Lankford said. “We’re trying to make a statement on this.”

For the first time, three Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders sought a major party’s nomination for president. One, Ms. Harris, is set to be vice president; another, the entrepreneur Andrew Yang, has been privately telling New York City leaders that he intends to run for mayor this year.

When analysts get a complete picture of the 2020 electorate, he said, the data will probably show that the total number of ballots cast by Asian-Americans nearly doubled.

Despite the modest increase in support for Mr. Trump, roughly two-thirds of Asian-American voters backed Mr. Biden — a fact often cited by the Asian-American officials who have urged the president-elect to pick a cabinet secretary from their community.

Roughly 30 percent of Asian-American voters do not identify as either Democrats or Republicans, and many are settling in the suburban swing districts that are the focus of both parties.It is a demographic and political reality that has been playing out in parts of Southern California for years. Randall Avila, the executive director of the Republican Party of Orange County, said he had found that many Asian-American voters — and potential candidates he had worked to recruit — approached Republican ideas with an open mind.

The real victory, experts on the Latino and Asian-American vote agreed, would be for voters of color to be pursued with the same vigor as white voters, who are routinely grouped into subcategories based on where they live, or their income or education level.“Democrats need to stop obsessing about white rural voters and white suburban moms,” said Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland.

One place they may demonstrate their growing political power is in Georgia this week. Neil Makhija leads an Indian-American political organization that is running a $2.5 million campaign to turn out A.A.P.I. voters in the state’s Senate runoffs. He sees the significant increase in Asian-American voter participation in November as a success — and a lesson.“What we’re going to try to do is take some of what we’ve learned,” he said, “and really go all in.”

At the federal level, anyone who “knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a state of a fair and impartially conducted election process” is breaking the law.

That is because while Mr. Trump clearly implied that Mr. Raffensperger might suffer legal consequences if he did not find additional votes for the president in Georgia, Mr. Trump stopped short of saying he would deliver on the threat himself against Mr. Raffensperger and his legal counsel, Ryan Germany, Mr. Sanderson said.

“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the president said during the call, referring to his baseless assertions of widespread election fraud. “You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”

Mr. Sanderson said, “Ultimately, I doubt this is behavior that would be prosecuted.”

“It is unlikely federal prosecutors would bring such a case,” Mr. Bromwich said. “But it certainly was god awful and unbelievable. But prosecuting a federal crime is obviously a very different thing.”

Trevor Potter, a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said the question would largely be up to the Justice Department in the Biden administration.

That is a policy decision.

“In threatening these officials with vague ‘criminal’ consequences, and in encouraging them to ‘find’ additional votes and hire investigators who ‘want to find answers,’ the president may have also subjected himself to additional criminal liability,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement.

A bipartisan group of centrist lawmakers, including a number of Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Mitt Romney of Utah — also urged their fellow party members to stand down.

“All challenges through recounts and appeals have been exhausted. At this point, further attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans’ confidence in the already determined election results.”

“The legal process was exhausted, and the results were decisively confirmed. The Department of Justice, too, found no basis for overturning the result. If states wish to reform their processes for future elections, that is their prerogative. But Joe Biden’s victory is entirely legitimate.”

At this point, further attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans’ confidence in the already determined election results.”

reports of robocalls spreading misinformation in the city of Flint that told voters that “due to long lines, they should vote tomorrow.” Attorney General Dana Nessel said that was false and called it an effort to suppress the vote.

An extension for receiving ballots in the mail by Nov. 10, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day, faces legal uncertainty after a federal appeals court ruling last week that the extended deadline is likely unconstitutional. The court ordered the state to segregate late-arriving ballots for possible disqualification.

Civil-rights groups said they filed a lawsuit in federal court late Monday against the Alamance County sheriff and chief of police in Graham, N.C., alleging the police disrupted a Saturday march to an early-voting location and intimidated and discouraged march participants from voting. The Graham Police Department said the demonstration blocked traffic and was deemed unsafe and unlawful. The department said it arrested eight people.

A Republican-backed lawsuit asked a federal judge to throw out at least 1,200 ballots in Montgomery County, outside Philadelphia, alleging local officials handled mail-in ballots illegally. The suit alleged the county Board of Elections was illegally sorting through and identifying potential problems with mail-in ballots received before Nov. 3. A county spokesperson said: “We believe our process is sound and permissible under the Election Code.”

The Supreme Court earlier let stand a ruling by Pennsylvania’s highest court that extended the deadline for accepting mail-in ballots by three days. The ruling also allows ballots with illegible postmarks to be counted if received by the deadline. The state’s top election official, a Democrat, extended the deadline to compensate for more voters turning to mail ballots. Republican plaintiffs asked the high court to reconsider the matter. In anticipation of possible postelection legal challenges, local election officials have been directed to separate ballots received after the original Election Day deadline.

The judge noted that state law requires voting on Election Day to take place inside buildings. To ensure compliance, the clerk for Harris said on Twitter that the county would operate one drive-through center on Election Day, at the Toyota Center, a large indoor arena.

The Supreme Court declined to allow pandemic-related changes to voting rules in Wisconsin, letting stand a federal appeals court’s ruling that mail-in ballots must be received by Election Day.

“People are just fed up with him, with the racial divide he made worse,” he said. “It’s like he did everything he could to prove he was unfit for office.”

On a central question of the campaign—balancing the spread of a pandemic that has resulted in more than 230,000 reported deaths in the U.S. against further damage to the economy—about two-thirds of voters said it was more important to limit spread of the disease, while a third said limiting additional damage to the economy was more critical

. The numbers were similar in the swing states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Georgia.

Among those who think the federal government’s top priority should be reducing the spread, about eight in 10 backed Mr. Biden, while about 8 in 10 of those who think the first concern should be limiting additional damage to the economy backed Mr. Trump.