Pfizer’s vaccine also contains nine other ingredients. Four of them are lipids with impossibly complex chemical names: (4-hydroxybutyl)azanediyl)bis(hexane-6,1-diyl)bis (ALC-3015); (2- hexyldecanoate),2-[(polyethylene glycol)-2000]-N,N-ditetradecylacetamide (ALC-0159); 1,2-distearoyl-snglycero-3-phosphocholine (DPSC); and cholesterol.

The vaccine also contains four salts: potassium chloride, monobasic potassium phosphate, basic sodium phosphate dihydrate and sodium chloride.

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a desperate 11th-hour effort by Trump allies to change the outcome of the election, the latest in a string of stinging legal defeats.

From protests outside the voting sites to livestreamed broadcasts of the activities inside the rooms, electors, state officials and party leaders are bracing for an extraordinary onslaught of attention.

Even as the electors prepared to vote on Monday, Mr. Trump on Sunday railed on Twitter against the “MOST CORRUPT ELECTION IN U.S. HISTORY” and suggested that swing states could not certify “without committing a severely punishable crime” — further raising concerns about electors’ personal security.

Even some Republicans who are more willing to acknowledge electoral reality seem unable to completely give up hope.

A broader effort to persuade Republican-controlled state legislatures to swap out Democratic electors for a slate loyal to Mr. Trump has also failed.

For Democrats, the Electoral College vote will be the final affirmation of defeat for a president they believe has undermined the foundation of the country’s political system.

Enshrined in the Constitution, electors are called into action weeks after an election is over.

As a result, more than half of the states plan to livestream their events, to provide transparency and pre-empt some of the conspiratorial thinking that many state officials anticipate will follow their events.

After the electors cast their ballots, the votes are counted and the electors sign certificates showing the results.

Still, none of that, he said, overshadowed how “exhilarating and humbling” it is to be one of the 16 Democratic electors, the first in Georgia in nearly three decades, the last time a Democrat won the state.

A Wisconsin elector, State Representative Shelia Stubbs of Madison, said she cried with joy after being named an elector this year.

In Canada, the first shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived on Sunday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Twitter.

By June, she had built her own dashboard to rival the state’s, funded in part by donations from hundreds of thousands of newfound followers on social media.

Ms. Jones has spent months publicly urging health department employees to denounce what she says has been the manipulation and obfuscation of virus data to make Florida look better off than it really is.

The story took a surprising new turn on Monday morning, when agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement appeared at the door of Ms. Jones’s townhome.Image

“He just pointed a gun at my children!” Ms. Jones yelled.

She denied having anything to do with the messages. Florida had reported 17,460 coronavirus deaths at the time, and she said she would never have rounded that number down.

“That’s textbook bad security practice, and this is an example of why — it’s cumbersome to revoke access and hard to attribute actions to the responsible people,” said J. Alex Halderman, a computer science and engineering professor at the University of Michigan.

Early on, state agencies refused to release information about the number of coronavirus hospitalizations and cases in long-term care facilities, and only provided it after news organizations threatened litigation.

The fund-raising appeal quickly surpassed her initial $150,000 goal.

When public distrust of the vetting process grew over the summer and fall, the agency issued guidelines vowing to listen to the panel, whose deliberations are public, before making its decision.

Dr. Vivek Murthy, who served as surgeon general under President Barack Obama, will reprise that role for Mr. Biden. A telegenic confidant of the president-elect, Mr. Murthy will become one of Mr. Biden’s closest advisers on medical issues and will lead much of the public outreach on the pandemic.

Jeffrey D. Zients, an entrepreneur and management consultant who served as the head of Mr. Obama’s National Economic Council and fixed the bungled rollout of the health law’s online insurance marketplace, will become a coronavirus czar in the White House, leading efforts to coordinate the fight against the coronavirus pandemic among the government’s sprawling agencies.

An outspoken advocate of improved health care access, Mr. Becerra said in 2017 that he would “absolutely” support Medicare for all, a proposal for government-run health care that Mr. Biden has explicitly rejected. A source familiar with the selection said Mr. Becerra would support the president-elect’s call for strengthening and preserving the A.C.A. and would not be pushing Medicare for all while in office.

As California’s top law enforcement official, Mr. Becerra helped lead legal fights across the nation for access to health care, focusing in particular on dismantling barriers for women struggling to get medical services.

Mr. Barr’s departure would also deprive the president of a cabinet officer who has wielded the power of the Justice Department more deeply in service of a president’s political agenda than any attorney general in a half-century.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. The White House had no comment.

Mr. Barr, 70, is the strongest proponent of presidential power to hold the office of attorney general since Watergate.

Mr. Barr revealed that appointment last week at the same time that he said he had not seen evidence that voter fraud had affected the results of the election.

In the big picture, earmarks add up to little more than a rounding error, generally constituting not more than 1 percent of the federal budget. They are used to determine spending priorities, not spending levels, meaning they determine how the pie gets divided rather than how big it is.

As conceived, earmarks allow the people who presumably best understand a state or district — its elected officials — to direct federal dollars to where they are most needed.

In 2007, the Democratic-controlled House began reforming the practice, increasing transparency and accountability.

In 2011, Republicans assumed control of the chamber and went even further, declaring a moratorium on earmarks.

This ban has made Congress less accountable and more dysfunctional. It is time to abandon the experiment.

Since America’s earliest days, they have proved a useful tool for building coalitions. (The first known instance of congressional earmarking dates to the Lighthouse Act of 1789.)

Considering the thicket of crises the nation is facing, big-ticket legislation, including another meaty round of coronavirus relief, is precisely what is needed.

Removing undocumented immigrants from the count would most likely have the effect of shifting seats to states that are older, whiter and typically more Republican.

Mr. Trump ordered Wilbur Ross, the secretary of commerce, to provide him with two sets of numbers, one including unauthorized immigrants and the other not.

A three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the new policy violated federal law. Two other courts have issued similar rulings, while one said the dispute was not ripe for consideration.

It concluded that the new policy made it less likely that undocumented immigrants and others would participate in the census, harming its accuracy.

On the core question in the case, the administration told the justices that the term “persons in each state” can be understood to require “a sovereign’s permission to remain within the jurisdiction.”

In a separate response, groups represented by the American Civil Liberties Union said the administration’s new policy violated the federal statute and the Constitution.

Asked about the role of states in the distribution process, Mr. Azar said that doses would be shipped out through normal vaccine distribution systems, and governors would be “like air traffic controllers” determining which hospitals or pharmacies receive shipments.

But generally, “Be thinking people in nursing homes, the most vulnerable, be thinking health care workers who are on the front lines,” he said.

More than 70 vaccines are being developed around the world, including 11 that, like Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines, are in large-scale trials to gauge effectiveness.

If authorization is granted, the first shots could be given as early as Dec. 21.

The government has arranged to buy vaccines from both Moderna and Pfizer and to provide it to the public free of charge.

F.D.A. scientists will examine the information, and the application is likely to undergo a final review on Dec. 17 by a panel of expert advisers to the agency, Mr. Bancel said, adding that he expected the advisers to make a decision within 24 to 72 hours. The F.D.A. usually follows the recommendations of its advisory panels.

In response to a question about how officials can guard against people using money or connections to jump the proverbial line, Mr. Azar vowed to “call out any inequities or injustices that we see.”

At the airport, Morris checked with other airlines and was told they had not added weight limits for wheelchairs.

Morris filed a complaint with American Airlines and quickly got back a written response: "The wheelchair could not be loaded on the aircraft due to the weight limitations and the passenger could not leave the wheelchair behind, so he was denied boarding for the flight."

Morris says he could not find the policy on American's website but a representative he spoke to on the phone said the new weight limit began in June.

In 2018, the federal government started requiring an airline to report every time it damaged or lost a wheelchair. It turned out that was happening about 25 to 30 times a day — at least, before air travel fell during the coronavirus.

To Morris, that didn't make sense.

The aircraft hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is that the airline has made a decision to exclude me."

The weight of a power wheelchair varies and is determined by components including batteries, motors, seating and systems that allow a wheelchair to tilt — which helps someone who can't move avoid painful skin ulcers — and other components.

A federal law, the Air Carrier Access Act, says an airline cannot refuse to take a passenger on the basis of his disability.

Kenneth Shiotani, an attorney with the National Disability Rights Network, looked through the Department of Transportation's regulations around that act and said he believes a weight limit on wheelchairs violates the act.

An airline can limit a wheelchair, based on size, if it doesn't fit through a plane's cargo doors. Morris lists those cargo door sizes on his website, Wheelchair Travel, so travelers can know in advance whether they need to modify a chair or use a different one before a flight. He knew, for instance, that the door on the Canadair Regional Jet model he was flying has a cargo door 33 inches high, large enough to take his wheelchair.

That travel is often essential, says Lee Page of the Paralyzed Veterans of America. "He needs to get there for job opportunities, or get there because of family emergency or get there because he's got a health appointment," Page says. "And in some cases, the only way to get to that destination might be that flight."

After NPR asked American Airlines about the limit, the airline's spokesperson said the restriction would remain in place. But she said the airline had offered Morris an "apology" and an accommodation: Next time, American said it would take the batteries off his wheelchair. That might get the chair under the 300-pound weight limit.

On Wednesday, Morris got to fly again.

But for the 2018 midterm elections, the command took a far more aggressive posture. In addition to sending the teams to allied countries, it sent warning messages to would-be Russian trolls before the vote, in its first offensive operation against Moscow; it then took at least one of those troll farms offline on Election Day and the days afterward.

After getting close to foreign adversaries’ own networks, Cyber Command can then get inside to identify and potentially neutralize attacks on the United States, according to current and former officials.

Cyber Command sends teams of experts overseas to work with partner and allied nations to help them find, identify and remove hostile intrusions on their government or military computer networks.

But Cyber Command officials said those efforts uncovered malware being used by adversarial hacking teams.

For the allied nations, inviting Cyber Command operatives not only helps improve their network defenses but also demonstrates to adversaries that the United States military is working with them. For the United States, the deployments give their experts an early look at tactics that potential adversaries are honing in their own neighborhoods, techniques that could later be used against Americans.

Similarly, Cyber Command officials said their efforts to try to counter foreign threats would not end with the close of voting on Tuesday; they will continue as votes are counted and the Electoral College prepares to meet in December.

“We are not stopping or thinking about our operations slacking off on Nov. 3,” General Moore said. “Defending the election is now a persistent and ongoing campaign for Cyber Command.”

And there were efforts to set expectations, as the Biden campaign and social media giants like Facebook and Twitter reminded voters that the results of the election may not be known on Tuesday, given the tens of millions of mailed-in ballots that must be counted and the number of key states that do not expect to have full counts on the first day.

The lawsuit was one of the most aggressive moves by Republicans in an election marked by more than 400 voting-related lawsuits.

Judge Andrew S. Hanen, a federal judge who was appointed by President George W. Bush, held an emergency hearing for the lawsuit on Monday and ruled against tossing the ballots. On Sunday, the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court had rejected a similar effort to get those ballots tossed out.

That's one reason why Philadelphia spent $5 million on new equipment to speedily process the deluge of mail-in ballots.

One machine sorts returned ballots in hours, instead of days if done manually. Another machine cuts open envelopes and spreads them apart with suction cups so workers can quickly pull out the ballots.

And there are 12 high-speed scanners that process 32,000 ballots an hour.

Meanwhile, President Trump continues to sow doubt about the veracity of voting in Philadelphia. The Trump campaign videotaped people putting ballots in drop boxes.

That prompted Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to issue a warning. "Anyone who comes to the cradle of American democracy to try to suppress the vote — and violates the law and commits crimes — is going to find themselves in a jail cell talking to a Philadelphia jury," he said last month.

So far, there have been no reports of voter intimidation.

Hanen said that if he found the plaintiffs did have standing, he would have still ruled against them "as to the voting that has already taken place," but that he would "probably enjoin tomorrow's votes."

One of the intervenors in the hearing, lawyer Andre Segura of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, argued that a ruling allowing the ballots to be thrown out would cause people to have to vote a second time.

Other attorneys said some of the affected voters were receiving medical treatment and would be unable to get to the polls on Election Day.

The Texas case is one of a number of legal challenges to voting and ballot counting, many of them brought by Republicans.

Texas, long a GOP stronghold, has become an unlikely swing state this year, with urban and suburban areas such as Harris County accounting for the bulk of the growing Democratic vote.

"Make no mistake: [T]his is not a partisan victory," Rebecca Acuña, the Biden campaign's Texas state director, said in a statement.

"It's hard to have two fears," says Ramirez, sitting in the parish hall of the suburban church in north Austin. "I'm afraid they'll separate me from my son, that immigration agents will come at any minute.

Biden pledges to reverse Trump's harsh immigration restrictions and reenact more lenient Obama-era policies, such as restoring the asylum process and creating a path to citizenship for unauthorized migrants already in the U.S. Biden's extensive immigration rollback runs to 22 pages.

Ramirez says they fled Ivan's abusive grandfather in the Mayan highlands of Guatemala five years ago, made it to the Texas border, and asked for asylum from the Obama/Biden administration. When her asylum request was denied, they fled to the safety of the church rather than let ICE remove them.

"If I could vote I would prefer Joe Biden," she says, "because, though he has deported lots of people, he was never as bad as Donald Trump, who has divided mothers from their children."

In her hopes for a Biden victory, Ramirez is articulating the aspirations of some 50 immigrants who have taken sanctuary in churches across the country and are publicly fighting their removal orders. And there are millions more.

The list expecting relief from a Biden admnistration includes 11 million migrants who are living in the U.S. illegally, thousands of asylum-seekers waiting in dangerous Mexican border cities for their cases to be heard, and thousands more DACA recipients, plus their parents and siblings. DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program started under Obama that gives temporary protection from deportation to immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

"We put some film on these windows so that they're not easily broken, if they're smashed, they'll stay in place. And we're hoping that no one can break into the store, at least not easily," Roy says. Nolan adds, "The film makes the glass shatterproof so it doesn't just explode upon contact."

While the nation's capital city is certain to be a focal point of post-election demonstrations, other cities are bracing for possible chaos too.

Workers were busy boarding up store windows while supporters of President Trump held a "freedom rally" that was briefly disrupted by counter protesters.

"Coming off of the summer, seeing the looting that occurred, there's a lot of anxiety," says Elliott Richardson who heads the Small Business Advocacy Council in Chicago.

Superintendent David Brown says Chicago police will respect people's rights to peacefully protest and will work first and foremost to de-escalate any confrontations, but he hastens to add that his officers will take swift action against anyone intent on spreading chaos.

In Beverly Hills, Calif. tensions felt high already this weekend.

The National Retail Federation has held training webinars for members on crisis prevention and de-escalating conflict and hired security consultants to help store owners prepare.

Groups on all sides of the political spectrum are planning election night demonstrations and the very real possibility that the results might not be known for days or weeks after Election Day could escalate tensions.

Despite a major surge in new coronavirus infections that have hit dozens of U.S. states in recent weeks, Trump has insisted on the campaign trail that the U.S. is "rounding the turn" on the pandemic that has now killed more than 231,000 Americans.

Trump has also become more vocal in his criticisms of Fauci, who said in an interview published Saturday by The Washington Post that the administration's handling of the crisis had fallen short.

Fauci contrasted the lack of mask-wearing at the White House that likely contributed to a super-spreader event that infected the president and several top aides with the way the campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris handled a positive coronavirus test in their camp last month.

"In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate," Fauci told CNN.

It was not immediately clear whether the president could directly fire Fauci, who is a career civil servant.

Llompart said she'll split her ballot. For governor, she's supporting the candidate who supports Puerto Rico's independence from the United States, and for downticket offices she'll support candidates from a new party, Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana — or Citizens' Victory Movement — that's emerging as the first substantial challenge in decades to the island's two-party system.

Though polling indicates that one of the two traditional party candidates will win, the numbers also suggest it could be with support from less than 40% of the electorate, the smallest vote share ever to propel a Puerto Rican governor to office.

The island's youngest voters have come of age during a recession that has driven an exodus of half-a-million people — largely young adults — to the mainland United States. The past four years alone have arguably been the most tumultuous in Puerto Rico's modern history. It has declared bankruptcy, lost control of its own finances to a federal board appointed to resolve its debt, faced massive cuts to education and pensions, muddled through the recovery from two major hurricanes, faced earthquakes, corruption scandals, and a pandemic.

Both parties' candidates are polling around 10 to 12%, and have similar policy priorities, though the pro-independence party has historically made the island's independence from the United States a central tenet of its platform.

Lebrón said it's that same energy driving the unprecedented political realignment that appears to be taking hold this year, as more voters demand a move away from the two-party system they believe has prioritized the statehood question while sidelining the needs of everyday Puerto Ricans.

"Not in this election, but maybe in 2024, or 2028, because the numbers in the younger demographic with these two old parties are very, very weak."

Alexandra Lúgaro, the Citizens' Victory gubernatorial candidate – is considered a longshot to win, but if candidates from her party earn seats in the legislature or at the municipal level, it could build momentum that carries the party to stronger showings in future elections.

"We're exhausted," Lebrón said.

Tuesday's election will also include a non-binding referendum asking Puerto Ricans whether they support statehood, and two additional minor candidates for the governorship.

DeLeón believes Victoria Ciudadana has a better chance of siphoning support away from the traditional pro- and anti-statehood parties that he feels have driven Puerto Rico's economy into the ground.

The ruling was released on Monday, just a day before Election Day.

"There is no evidence that any vote that should lawfully be counted has or will not be counted.

But the plaintiffs failed to show any error or flaw in the Agilis results or any other reason for such a mandate, Wilson wrote.

"There is only one 'result,' and that comes after every lawful vote is counted," Ford tweeted.

The lawsuit had also asked for an immediate halt to counting and verification of mail ballots, but Wilson rejected that request shortly after the suit was filed last month.

"Clark County is a blue county, and this is a numbers game. And quite frankly they would like to exclude as many ballots in Clark County as they can. They want a high rejection rate," Zunino said, according to the Review-Journal. "They are not challenging the process in Elko County or Humboldt County or Carson City because those are red counties."

Nevada's Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, told legislators earlier this year that there were no cases of fraud during the state's primary election in June, which was conducted almost entirely by mail.