President Donald Trump and a long line of his Republican supporters are hoping the Supreme Court will agree to take up a long-shot Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate the results of the 2020 election in four key swing states.

Republican attorneys general from 17 states filed in support of Texas, as did a group of conservative lawyers and personalities.

Trump himself also sought to join the suit. He is scheduled to meet with 12 state attorneys general on Thursday, 10 of whom filed in support of the suit.

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. On social media, Trump suggested the Supreme Court would finally give him the hearing he has been seeking.

"The case that everyone has been waiting for is the State's case with Texas and numerous others joining. It is very strong, ALL CRITERIA MET," Trump tweeted Wednesday.

Meanwhile, President-elect Joe Biden's pick for secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, is raising questions about civilian control of the military.

In order for Austin to serve as defense secretary he will require a waiver from both houses of Congress -- the waiver is needed because Austin retired from the Army four years ago, which is less than the seven-year gap any nominee to be a secretary of defense must have from the end of their military service.

If approved, Austin would only be the third to receive the waiver to take the position, but the second in four years.

Some Democratic lawmakers have expressed concerns that they will be asked to once again consider a waiver just four years after they voted to do so for retired Marine Gen. James Mattis. Being asked to give Austin the waiver places the 17 Democratic senators and 150 Democratic House Representatives who voted against the Mattis waiver in an awkward position.

-ABC News' Devin Dwyer, Olivia Rubin, Matt Mosk and Luis Martinez

President-elect Joe Biden will travel to Georgia on Tuesday Dec. 15 to campaign for Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock in their Senate runoff races, the Biden transition has announced.

Biden's visit will come during the first week of early voting in the Jan. 5  Senate runoff elections that could determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the U.S. Senate.
-ABC News' Briana Stewart and John Verhovek

Pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell has just lost her third straight case in her conspiracy-fueled bid to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, this time in Arizona.

As in the earlier cases, the judge did not look kindly on the unfounded claims that filled Powell's lawsuit. Judge Diane Humetewa, an Obama appointee, wrote in her dismissal Wednesday night that Powell's allegations might "find favor in the public sphere of gossip and innuendo," but they "cannot be substitute for earnest pleadings and procedure in federal court."

"They most certainly cannot be the basis for upending Arizona's 2020 General Election," Humetewa wrote.

Powell saw swift defeat in two cases Monday, with federal judges in Michigan and Georgia dismissing or denying her efforts there within hours of each other. Both of those rulings have since been appealed. Only Powell's Wisconsin case remains. A ruling is expected soon.

-ABC News' Olivia Rubin and Matthew Mosk

Less than 24 hours after the news broke that Biden would nominate Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, to serve as his secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a high-profile figure within the progressive left appears poised to launch a bid for her House seat.

On Wednesday, candidacy paperwork bearing the name of former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner was filed with the FEC for Fudge's 11th Congressional District seat. Sources close to Turner told ABC News to expect an announcement from Turner herself "soon."

While far from a national name, Turner is immensely popular within the Sen. Bernie Sanders-led progressive left after serving as a campaign surrogate and adviser during Sanders' 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. In between, she served as president of Our Revolution, the political action organization founded in the wake of Sanders' first campaign.

A Turner run would be noteworthy for the amount of money she could potentially raise. Given their close relationship, it's likely Turner would be granted access to Sanders' massive email list, of which many subscribers are already familiar with Turner via her charismatic stump work on the senator's behalf.

Already a resident of the 11th Congressional District, Turner served on the Cleveland City Council prior to being appointed to the state Senate in 2008. She was the Democratic nominee for Ohio secretary of state in 2014, but was defeated by nearly 25 points. Such a defeat would be unlikely in the heavily blue 11th district where the Democratic primary is tantamount to election.

-ABC News' Adam Kelsey

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