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.
Top headlines:
Government shutdown averted for now
The Senate has approved a one-week continuing resolution extension of government funding -- buying themselves seven days to come up with a grand deal on government funding and COVID-19 relief.
In a dramatic fashion, both Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., indicated that next week, they must get a vote on their amendment to provide working class Americans with another round of $1,200 stimulus checks -- or they will block government funding, in effect, forcing a government shutdown.
-ABC News' Trish Turner and Allison Pecorin
Senate sends $740.5 billion defense bill to Trump's desk with veto proof majority
The Senate voted to send the National Defense Authorization bill, the military's annual budget, to Trump's desk Friday afternoon by a veto-proof majority of 84-13.
While the bill received broad support from members on both sides of the aisle, it faced objections from each party's most off-center members. Progressive Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Jeff Merkley opposed the bill, as did conservative Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley and Sen. Tom Cotton.
Trump has threatened as recently as Tuesday to veto the bill.
-ABC News' Trish Turner and Allison Pecorin
Trump team loses in Wisconsin as SCOTUS response looms
As the Trump campaign waits for smoke signals from the U.S. Supreme Court, it faced yet another courtroom defeat on Friday.
The Milwaukee County Circuit Court in Wisconsin has denied the Trump campaign's attempt to toss out 220,000 ballots it said should have been rejected following recounts in Dane and Milwaukee Counties. Judge Stephen Simanek noted the campaign made "no allegations of widespread fraud," nor did it submit any evidence that would support such claims.
The Trump campaign will now likely appeal the decision to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Since his Nov. 3 defeat, the president and his allies have mounted over 50 lawsuits in state and federal courts that have met with resounding and, at times, scathing defeats.
-ABC News' Alex Hosenball and Matthew Mosk
Biden campaign, DNC devote money and staffers to Georgia Senate runoffs
As the runoff elections for Georgia's two U.S. Senate seats that will decide which party controls the chamber enter their final weeks, Biden's presidential campaign is ramping up its investments to bolster the candidacies of Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock.
In coordination with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Biden campaign has spent roughly $5 million thus far in the Georgia runoffs and are paying for "approximately 50 staffers" to help with organizing, voter outreach and other efforts, according to a Biden campaign official. Around a dozen of the campaign's data analytics staffers are also helping.
The Biden campaign and the DNC also have raised nearly $10 million for both Ossoff and Warnock combined, and earlier this week launched a "Flip Georgia Fund" to aid their campaigns.
Biden himself will travel to Georgia on Tuesday to campaign for Ossoff and Warnock and will emphasize his commitment to helping candidates win up and down the ballot and build a broad coalition that will support his agenda to "build back better," according to a Biden campaign official.
-ABC News' John Verhovek
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