Michigan state legislature closes offices due to 'credible threats of violence'
Law enforcement recommended the Michigan legislature close its offices.
President Donald Trump is slated to hand over control of the White House to President-elect Joe Biden in 39 days.
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FDA commissioner, Gov. Phil Murphy discuss COVID-19 vaccine on ABC's 'This Week'
Following authorization of Pfizer's vaccine for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, Martha Raddatz goes one-on-one with FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn to discuss the next phase of the fight against COVID-19. Then, Raddatz discusses how the vaccine will be distributed with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.
Plus, for analysis of all the week's political news, including the Texas election lawsuit that was rejected by the Supreme Court and the Biden transition, Gov. Chris Christie, Rahm Emanuel and the Powerhouse Roundtable join Raddatz. See it on "This Week" Sunday.
-ABC News' Adia Robinson
Doug Emhoff, Twitter defend Jill Biden following WSJ op-ed
Twitter users, including Doug Emhoff, came to Jill Biden's defense following a Wall Street Journal op-ed that called on the incoming first lady to drop the honorific "Dr." from her name as she enters the White House.
"Madame First Lady -- Mrs. Biden -- Jill -- kiddo," essayist Joseph Epstein begins his op-ed, published online Friday evening.
“Any chance you might drop the 'Dr.' before your name?" Epstein continues. "'Dr. Jill Biden' sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic."
Biden earned her Doctorate in Education from the University of Delaware in 2007.
Unsurprisingly, the op-ed caused a stir on Twitter, with many -- including the incoming second gentleman -- accusing the writer of misogyny.
“Dr. Biden earned her degrees through hard work and pure grit," Emhoff tweeted Saturday. "She is an inspiration to me, to her students, and to Americans across this country. This story would never have been written about a man."
"Dr. Jill Biden" was trending on Twitter Saturday afternoon, and 2020 Guggenheim Fellow Sarah Parcak encouraged women who earned a Ph.D. to consider adding “Dr.” to their Twitter name "in solidarity with Dr. Jill Biden and to stand in solidarity against that sexist trash op-ed about her in the WSJ."
Biden uses the name "Dr. Jill Biden" and the handle @DrBiden on Twitter. She has not publicly responded to the op-ed.
Note: The AP Stylebook says to use "Dr." on first formal reference for individuals who hold select medical degrees, such as doctor of medicine and doctor of optometry. Many news organizations use this standard.
-ABC News' Molly Nagle contributed to this report
Trump-appointed judge in Wisconsin rejects another Trump election challenge
While the U.S. Supreme Court has twice refused to hear pro-Trump challenges to the 2020 elections, a federal judge in Wisconsin on Saturday joined the chorus of rulings against Trump in his effort to use the courts to invalidate Biden’s victory.
“This Court has allowed plaintiff the chance to make his case and he has lost on the merits,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Brett H. Ludwig, a Trump appointee. Ludwig noted that the president had asked “that the Rule of Law be followed,” and he declared in response: “It has been.”
The ruling comes just one day after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider an election challenge brought by the Texas attorney general contesting the way elections were run in four states, including Wisconsin. Trump had called that case “the big one,” because he thought it held the best hopes for him of re-litigating the 2020 contest in court.
This latest ruling marks nearly 50 losses for the president in cases brought by him and his supporters since election day. In Wisconsin, where Biden won by more than 20,000 votes, Trump asked for 221,000 absentee and mail-in ballots to be excluded on the grounds they were collected in ways not laid out by the state legislature. And the president argued that the legislature should be afforded the chance to select an alternate slate of electors.
Ludwig’s 23-page opinion gave wide latitude to Trump -- finding that the president had standing to file his election challenge and was not too late to raise his concerns about the way the election was conducted. But the outcome of the case was the same as rulings in other battleground states -- that Biden’s victory was attained legally and should not be thrown to a legislature to upend.
The president, Ludwig wrote, “has not proved” that state election officials violated his rights. “To the contrary, the record shows Wisconsin’s Presidential Electors are being determined in the very manner directed by the Legislature, as required by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.”
Ludwig further noted that if he followed the demands set out in Trump’s lawsuit, “any disappointed loser in a Presidential election, able to hire a team of clever lawyers, could flag claimed deviations from the election rules and cast doubt on the election results. This would risk turning every Presidential election into a federal court lawsuit over the Electors Clause.”
The Trump campaign has not yet responded to requests for comment.
At the moment the federal ruling was handed down, the Wisconsin Supreme Court was hearing arguments on a separate challenge to a recount of votes in the state, which had failed in a lower court.
-ABC News' Matthew Mosk and Alex Hosenball
Trump supporters rally in DC
A day after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Texas' challenge to Biden's 2020 presidential election victory, Trump supporters gathered in Washington, D.C. to protest alleged voter fraud.
The "March for Trump" event, which started at noon on Saturday, includes a march to the U.S. Supreme Court to "demand transparency and protect election integrity," according to promotional materials.
Former Trump administration national security adviser Mike Flynn was among those in attendance.
Trump tweeted Saturday morning that he just found out about the rally and said "I'll be seeing them."
On Friday, the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit brought by the state of Texas and Republican allies of Trump to throw out millions of votes in four states and overturn Biden's victory. In dismissing the case, the court said Texas had no "cognizable interest" in how Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia conduct their own elections.
The rally also comes as members of the Electoral College will meet Monday to formally cast their votes for president.
Georgia secretary of state to recertify Biden's win Monday
Up against Tuesday's "safe harbor" deadline, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that he will recertify that Biden won Georgia's election sometime Monday following the state's third recount of the presidential vote there which has Biden ahead by nearly 12,000 votes.
"It's been a long 34 days since the election on Nov. 3. We have now counted legally cast ballots, three times, and the results remain unchanged," Raffensperger told reporters.
As he did in his WSJ op-ed this morning, the secretary equated how former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams acted after her 2018 loss and Trump's behavior in 2020.
"Whether it's the president of the United States or a failed gubernatorial candidate ... disinformation regarding election administration should be condemned and rejected," he said. "All this talk of a stolen election, whether it's Stacey Abrams, or the president of the United States is hurting our state."
Raffensperger also said that "the focus on Nov. 3 is drawing energy away from" the state's goals of job growth, efficient COVID-19 vaccine distribution and "getting back to normal."
"I know there are people that are convinced the election was fraught with problems, but the evidence -- the actual evidence, the facts -- tell us a different story," he said.
Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager in Raffensperger's office, came to the podium afterward to fact check some of the misinformation that the president has helped spread. In one example, he directly called out the president's legal team for how they've tried to "mislead" people about a video from counting occurring in State Farm Arena in Fulton County that Trump played at his rally in Valdosta on Saturday night.
"What's really frustrating is the president's attorneys had this same videotape. They saw the exact same things the rest of us could see, and they chose to mislead state senators and the public about what was on that video," he said, debunking the notion that there were "magic ballots" that showed up in the state's largest county.
"They knew it was untrue and they continue to do things like this," Sterling said. "We continue to see people who are put in positions of responsibility, sending out this disinformation and undermining the electoral system," he added later.Minutes after Raffensperger told reporters he would receritfy the vote Monday, Trump continued his attacks on election officials in the state on Twitter, targeting GOP Gov. Brian Kemp for signature verification saying he'd have an "easy win" were it conducted -- but signature verification was already done twice for absentee ballots in the state, and the vote was recounted three times affirming Biden's win.
-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan