Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said on Tuesday that the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 had been “provoked by the president and other powerful people,” stating publicly for the first time that he holds President Trump at least partly responsible for the assault.
“The mob was fed lies,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to attempts by Mr. Trump to overturn the election based on bogus claims of voter fraud. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”
Mr. McConnell made the remarks on his last full day as majority leader, speaking on the eve of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inauguration and as the Senate was bracing to receive a single article of impeachment from the House charging Mr. Trump with “incitement of insurrection.”
The Kentucky Republican has indicated privately that he believes that Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses, but he has said he has yet to decide whether to vote to convict the president, and many senators in his party are awaiting a sign from Mr. McConnell before making their own judgments. It would take 17 Republicans joining all 50 Democrats to find the president guilty, which would allow the Senate to hold a second vote to disqualify Mr. Trump from public office in the future.
Mr. McConnell’s remarks came hours before he was set to meet face to face with his Democratic counterpart, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, to work out a set of rules for the trial and the coming Senate session, when the chamber will be split 50-50 between the parties. Democrats will hold control because Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will have the power to break Senate ties, but Mr. Schumer will need at least some cooperation from Mr. McConnell to run the chamber and get things done.
On impeachment, the Republican leader appeared to be striking a far different posture than he did a year ago, when the Senate first sat in judgment of Mr. Trump. Then, Mr. McConnell acted at the White House’s behest to set trial rules that would favor acquittal. Now, he has told allies he hopes never to speak to Mr. Trump again and is doing nothing to persuade senators to back him, instead calling the impeachment vote a matter of conscience.
But as Democrats take unified control of Washington, he warned them that pursuing a partisan agenda would come at their own political risk.
“Certainly November’s election did not hand any side a mandate for sweeping ideological change,” Mr. McConnell said. “Our marching orders from the American people are clear: We’re to have a robust discussion and seek common ground. We are to pursue bipartisan agreement everywhere we can, and check and balance one another respectfully where we must.”
Speaking after Mr. McConnell, Mr. Schumer stressed that the Senate would proceed on three thorny paths at once, convening a trial at the same time as Democrats try to confirm Mr. Biden’s cabinet nominees and begin to draft additional coronavirus relief legislation.
Though some Democrats have fretted that Mr. Trump’s trial will overshadow Mr. Biden’s opening days in office, Mr. Schumer insisted a trial was necessary to eliminate the risk Mr. Trump may continue to pose to the country, even out of office.
“He will continue spreading lies about the election and stoking the grievances of his most radical supporters, using the prospect of a future presidential run to poison the public arena at a time where we must get so much done,” Mr. Schumer said.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will propose far-reaching legislation on Wednesday to give millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States a chance to become citizens in as little as eight years, part of an ambitious and politically perilous overhaul intended to wipe away President Trump’s four-year assault on immigration.
Under the proposal that Mr. Biden will send to Congress on his first day in office, current recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as “Dreamers,” and others in temporary programs that were set up to shield some undocumented immigrants from deportation would be allowed to apply for permanent legal residency immediately, according to transition officials who were briefed on Mr. Biden’s plan.
The legislation would also restore and expand programs for refugees and asylum seekers following efforts by Mr. Trump and Stephen Miller, the architect of his immigration agenda, to deny entry to those seeking shelter from poverty, violence and war. Mr. Biden’s bill would inject new money into foreign aid for Central American countries and enhance security at the border with new technologies instead of construction of a border wall.
If passed by Congress, the legislation would profoundly reshape the American immigration system, making it more generous to people from other parts of the world while rejecting the fearful messaging about immigrants employed by Mr. Trump since he became a presidential candidate in 2015.
But Mr. Biden’s proposal will also kick off a contentious new era of debate in the country about how America should treat outsiders, an issue that has been at the center of the breach between the two parties for decades. By sending his immigration proposals to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Mr. Biden is signaling his willingness to step into that political maelstrom during his first days as president.
The immigration bill faces an uncertain future. Democrats narrowly control both chambers of Congress, but Mr. Biden will need bipartisan cooperation, especially in the Senate, where legislation requires 60 votes. Because Democrats hold 50 seats in the chamber, the president-elect will need 10 Republicans to support his efforts in order to pass it into law.
Former President Barack Obama successfully persuaded 68 senators, including fourteen Republicans, to support a comprehensive immigration bill in 2013, only to have the effort die in the Republican-controlled House. Now, with Democrats in charge of the House, the challenge for Mr. Biden will be in the Senate, where almost all of the Republicans who backed Mr. Obama have left.
They include former Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee, Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Jeffrey Chiesa of New Jersey, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Dean Heller of Nevada and Mark Kirk of Illinois. Some of them were replaced with more conservative senators who are unlikely to back Mr. Biden’s plan.
During his four years in office, Mr. Trump transformed much of the Republican Party in his image. His core voters — and those of many Republicans now in office — now put immigration at the top of their concerns, and many echo the president’s harsh and overstated messaging about the dangers from immigrants to their lives and livelihoods.
Mr. Biden is betting on his longstanding relationships in the Senate and a backlash to some of Mr. Trump’s more extreme immigration measures, including separating migrant families at the border and forcing asylum-seekers to wait in slumlike facilities in Mexico while their applications for entry are processed.
He is also counting on support from religious and business groups who have long backed a more robust system of immigration. Catholic organizations argue that the country is morally obliged to be more generous to those seeking refuge, while groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce say the country needs immigrants to remain competitive.
The Senate had a jam-packed schedule of hearings on Tuesday to begin considering President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s nominees for his cabinet, but the process has been badly delayed, likely making Mr. Biden the first president in decades to take office without his national security team in place on Day 1.
The delay by congressional Republicans in recognizing Mr. Biden’s election victory, coupled with two Georgia runoff elections that left the Senate majority up in the air until Jan. 5, held up confirmation hearings for Mr. Biden’s team. That has made it impossible for the Senate to move quickly to fill top national security posts, including the secretary of defense, a job normally filled immediately after the president takes office to illustrate continuity of American power.
Senate committees kicked off hearings on Tuesday morning for three nominess: Janet Yellen to be Treasury secretary; Alejandro N. Mayorkas to be secretary of homeland security; and Avril D. Haines to be director of national intelligence. Hearings for two other nominees — Lloyd J. Austin III to be secretary of defense and Antony J. Blinken to be secretary of state — were expected Tuesday afternoon.
The nomination of General Austin, a retired three-star general, to be secretary of defense, faces a double hurdle. The hearing at 3 p.m. on Tuesday is to consider the special waiver he will require to join the Cabinet since he was an active-duty officer within the last seven years — an exception that has yet to be approved by the House and Senate.
Since 1993, the Senate has confirmed the secretary of defense on the first day of a newly inaugurated president as a sign of strength to potential adversaries. Jim Mattis, President Trump’s first secretary of defense, received a similar waiver and was confirmed on the first day of Mr. Trump’s administration on Jan. 20, 2017, along with John Kelly, his first secretary of homeland security.
On President Barack Obama’s first day in office, six cabinet secretaries were confirmed by the Senate. He kept Bob Gates as secretary of defense, a holdover from the Bush administration.
Anticipating the delays, the Biden administration has indicated it will place acting secretaries at the head of most agencies, including an appointee of Mr. Trump, David L. Norquist, at the Pentagon.
Given the unconventional transition, marked by the outgoing administration’s refusal to recognize its defeat, the way Senate Republicans handle the Biden cabinet nominations will provide an early indication of how cooperative they intend to be with the new president. Though nominees are no longer subject to 60-vote filibusters in the Senate, the minority party can still drag out confirmation votes for days even for non-controversial candidates.
Republicans have complained that Democrats subjected Trump nominees to excessive delays, and they might want to return the favor.
Here are the other nominees facing hearings on Tuesday:
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Mr. Blinken will go before the Foreign Relations Committee, a panel on which he worked as a top aide for six years during the administration of President George W. Bush, at 2 p.m. In prepared comments, a copy of which were shared with The New York Times, Mr. Blinken planned to draw an implicit contrast with the Trump administration’s approach to diplomacy, pledging to revitalize a demoralized State Department, recommit to international alliances and re-establish American leadership in the world with what he called “humility and confidence.”
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Mr. Mayorkas, a former deputy secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration, testified before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel to make his case for the top job. If confirmed, he would be tasked with restoring stability to an agency that has been riddled with vacancies and led by a revolving door of acting officials.
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At the Finance Committee, Ms. Yellen told lawmakers that investing in vaccine distribution and expanded jobless benefits will provide the biggest “bang” for the economy in a future stimulus package to help Americans get through the current “dark” economic time.
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Ms. Haines, answering questions from lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, if confirmed, she would help the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security with a public written intelligence assessment threat from QAnon, a wide-ranging conspiracy movement that was involved, in part, with the riot at the Capitol earlier this month.
Jennifer Steinhauer, Lara Jakes, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Alan Rappeport and Julian Barnes contributed reporting.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday will deliver one last set of remarks from Wilmington, Del., where he has conducted his transition amid a raging pandemic, before heading to Washington on the eve of his inauguration.
Aides to Mr. Biden described his Wilmington remarks as a “send-off” moment ahead of the more formal inaugural events in Washington.
Mr. Biden, a train enthusiast who earned the moniker “Amtrak Joe” for his frequent trips between Washington and Delaware as a senator and vice president, had been planning to take the train to the nation’s capital, but that was scrubbed after discussions with the Secret Service about the security situation in the wake of the attack on the Capitol.
In the evening, the president-elect and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will participate in a ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool honoring the nearly 400,000 people who have died during the pandemic. They will be present as 400 lights are turned on around the perimeter of the Reflecting Pool. Each light is meant to represent approximately 1,000 Americans who have perished from the virus.
The somber remembrance will kick off two days of in-person and virtual events as Mr. Biden takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, becoming the 46th president of the United States at a time of economic struggle and cultural upheaval in the wake of President Trump’s four tumultuous years in the White House. When she is sworn in, Ms. Harris will become the nation’s first female vice president.
The event at the Lincoln Memorial will kick off “a national moment of unity” at 5:30 p.m. Eastern that will include similar memorials at the Empire State Building, the Space Needle in Seattle and other landmarks across the country, with events also planned for Mr. Biden’s hometowns, Scranton, Pa., and Wilmington, Del.
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, will deliver the invocation at the Lincoln Memorial event. Two acclaimed gospel singers, Yolanda Adams and Lori Marie Key, will perform at the commemoration.
Mr. Biden is expected to spend Tuesday night at Blair House, the presidential guesthouse located across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
For 90 minutes on Monday, a swath of the National Mall was illuminated with 56 “pillars of light” and close to 200,000 flags in an art display representing the people who are unable to attend the presidential inauguration because of the coronavirus pandemic and restrictive security measures.
The display represents all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the United States’s five permanently inhabited territories.
According to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inaugural committee, the art display signified a “commitment to an inclusive and safe event that everyone can enjoy from their home.”
The flags will be illuminated on Tuesday and Wednesday night as well, the committee said.
President Trump, during his one term in office, has used clemency power on behalf of convicted liars and crooked politicians, some of whom have been his friends. But the long list of pardons his team has prepared for him to sign on his final full day in office includes the names of people who have been serving life sentences for drug or fraud charges and who for years have been seeking clemency.
In the past, the administration has emphasized clemency for low-level offenders in order to blunt criticism that Mr. Trump was inappropriately offering pardons to people to whom he had personal connections. Tuesday’s group includes non-violent offenders whose names have been percolating for years among advocates who believe their punishments never fit their crimes and whose cases underscore the broken nature of the country’s criminal justice system.
The names were recommended by a group that included Alice Johnson, who has been working with #Cut50, a prisoner advocacy group, and Mark Holden, a former executive at Koch Industries. Ms. Johnson herself was granted a full pardon after speaking on Mr. Trump’s behalf at the Republican National Convention and has continued to personally press Mr. Trump and his family members about their cases. The Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney was cut out of the process, as has been typical in the Trump White House.
Among those being pardoned Tuesday, according to people directly involved in the process, are Darrell Frazier, who has served more than 30 years of a life sentence for drug conspiracy charges. During his incarceration, Darrell founded The Joe Johnson Tennis Foundation, a nonprofit supporting children in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Craig Cesal has been serving a life sentence without parole on a marijuana charge. “My crime was that my truck repair business in Chicago fixed trucks operated by a Florida long-haul trucking company whose drivers trafficked marijuana in the south,” he told The Washington Post in 2016.
Lavonne Roach, a nonviolent drug offender, has been serving a 30-year sentence after she was charged with conspiracy to distribute meth. Ms. Roach, a Lakota Sioux woman, has been in prison since 1994.
Chalana McFarland was sentenced in 2005 to 30 years for multiple counts of mortgage fraud. She was sent to prison when her daughter was 4 years old. Since July, she has been serving her sentence at home because of concerns about the spread of the coronavirus in Florida prisons.
Michael Pelletier, a paraplegic who has used a wheelchair since he was 11, was serving a life sentence in federal prison for a nonviolent marijuana conspiracy offense.
Most clemency petitions sit with the Office of the Pardon Attorney for years, while certain people serving time on drug or fraud charges have gotten on the president’s radar through direct appeals from advocates the administration has come to rely on.
The final list, expected to be part of a broader package announced Tuesday by the president, was sent to the White House counsel’s office by Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser, for vetting, according to one of the people who is directly involved.
Advocates said they were hopeful that the Biden administration would be able to revamp the clemency process, and that the pardons approved by Mr. Trump would give the next administration some cover with conservatives in the future.
Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said the administration would not comment on the pardons.
Two National Guard troops have been removed from duties related to the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. following vetting for links to right-wing extremist movements, a Pentagon official said on Tuesday.
The official declined to provide any details about the vetting that detected the Guard members, who are from two different states.
The acting defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller, said on Sunday that the F.B.I. was assisting the U.S. military in vetting more than 25,000 National Guard troops being deployed to assist in protecting the Capitol and areas in central Washington for potential security concerns.
An Army spokesperson declined to provide any information on the two National Guard troops or the vetting procedures, citing operational security, and referred all questions to the U.S. Secret Service.
The announcement of their removal comes as the Pentagon is intensifying efforts to identify and combat white supremacy and other far-right extremism in its ranks as federal investigators seek to determine how many military personnel and veterans joined the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The F.B.I. investigation into the Capitol siege, still in its very early stages, has identified at least six suspects with military links out of the more than 100 people who have been taken into federal custody or the larger number still under investigation. They include a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel from Texas, an Army officer from North Carolina and an Army reservist from New Jersey. Another person with military service was shot and killed in the assault.
The military’s examination of its ranks marks a new urgency for the Pentagon, which has a history of downplaying the rise of white nationalism and right-wing activism, even as Germany and other countries are finding a deep strain embedded in their armed forces.
Federal officials are vetting thousands of National Guard troops arriving to help secure the inauguration. Of the 21,500 Guard personnel who had arrived in Washington by Monday, any who will be near President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will receive additional background checks, a standard procedure to counter insider threats that was also taken before President Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
Defense Department officials say they are looking into stepping up the monitoring of social media postings from service members, in much the way companies do with their employees.
Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed trying to climb through a door in the Capitol, was an Air Force veteran with a robust social media presence.
The reckoning at the Pentagon comes as retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III is poised to become the nation’s first Black defense secretary, an ascension that, depending on how General Austin decides to proceed, could either sharpen or blur the American military’s decades-long battles with racial inequality and white supremacy. General Austin’s confirmation hearings begin on Tuesday, and lawmakers will most likely press him on how he plans to tackle extremism in the ranks.
Rain is not in the forecast for President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday, but uncertainty, sown by his predecessor, will cloud the proceedings.
President Trump’s incitement of the Jan. 6 riot, and his refusal to attend Mr. Biden’s swearing-in — if for no other reason than to prove he is tangibly and personally committed to the peaceful transfer of power — has made the topic of security as inescapable as the armed troops marching through the streets of Washington.
Will the inauguration go off without an incident?
Mr. Biden’s team and security officials are nervous, but believe they have taken sufficient precautions — and a quick overview of the deployments starkly illustrates the state of high alert.
As of Tuesday morning, 25,000 National Guard troops from 50 states and three territories had taken up positions in and around the Capitol, as well as throughout the city, Guard officials said.
In addition, the Pentagon plans to deploy about 2,750 active-duty personnel in support of the event. That includes 750 active-duty troops assigned to specialized units including bomb squad technicians; medical personnel (including those conducting Covid-19 testing in support of the attending physician of Congress); logistics and communications support personnel; and troops dealing with chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological threats.
Coast Guard helicopters and vessels will be in the air and nearby waterways. Air Force fighter jets stationed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland will be aloft over the region.
Can Biden project optimism?
Mr. Biden is, in a sense, facing the same constraints imposed upon him by the coronavirus pandemic, which limited his live-events schedule, and reduced his crowds to a smattering of socially distanced folding chairs and cars at drive-in rallies.
As a result, his team has become adept at political set dressing aimed at making empty, unpopulated spaces appear welcoming, warm and patriotic.
But the biggest challenge faced by Mr. Biden during his Inaugural Address is not optics. How will the new president — whose supporters were so focused on ousting Mr. Trump they stuck “Bye-Don” signs in their lawns — balance his impulse to project unity and Democrats’ fervor to hold Mr. Trump’s accountable?
And will he make any reference to his predecessor’s looming impeachment trial?
Who will Trump pardon?
It’s never too late to make a last impression, and Mr. Trump could show some uncharacteristic self-restraint when it comes to pardons.
That does not seem to be his plan. For his final day in office, Mr. Trump is planning a final wave of dozens of pardons, and those under consideration include Sheldon Silver, the disgraced former New York Assembly speaker, and the rapper Lil Wayne. Though he had previously mused about possibly issuing himself a pardon before he departed the White House, Mr. Trump has apparently, for now, set aside the idea.
The size and precise composition of Mr. Trump’s list is still being determined, but it is expected to cover at least 60 pardons or commutations and perhaps more than 100.
These last acts could linger into his political afterlife, if he is serious about running again in 2024. Swing voters, as a rule, detest the granting of preferential treatment to the rich and powerful — and viewed Bill Clinton’s final-act pardons with such distaste, they later became a factor in Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.
What will the world think?
Mr. Biden’s election has been greeted among world leaders with a kind of genial relief (outside of Russia, Brazil, China and Mexico) and even Trump-adjacent leaders like Boris Johnson are suggesting they are happy to see Mr. Trump fly off to Florida.
On Tuesday, a new poll by The Pew Research Center put a finer point on that trend: In Britain, France and Germany, approval of Mr. Biden shot up to between 65 and 79 percent, a striking shift from Mr. Trump’s approval rating, which languished under 20 percent among those key U.S. allies.
But even members of Mr. Biden’s national security team quietly worry that the country’s international standing has been permanently damaged.
Multiculturalism “is not who America is,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on his last full day at the State Department, a curious message from a diplomat whose own ancestors were immigrants from Italy, and one that ran counter to the United States’ long-held pride in being a melting pot of cultures.
In a post on Twitter, Mr. Pompeo, who has overseen a State Department where diplomats of color have been ignored, passed over or otherwise pressured to resign, also decried what he described as a sop to political correctness that he said “points in one direction — authoritarianism.”
“Wokeism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they’re not who America is,” Mr. Pompeo wrote. “They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker.”
The tweet infuriated American diplomats abroad and in the United States who described it as a final insult by an administration that has promoted far more white male Foreign Service Officers than women or people of color. Black and Hispanic diplomats each make up 8 percent of the Foreign Service, and Asians account for 7 percent, according to State Department data from March, the most recent available.
Mr. Pompeo’s post was particularly notable in that it came the day before Kamala Harris will be inaugurated as the first woman of color to hold the office of vice president.
“Talk about not reading the room,” said Lewis A. Lukens, the former deputy ambassador in London, responding to Mr. Pompeo’s post on Twitter.
Mr. Pompeo’s remarks may have been aimed at political conservatives he hopes to win over in future campaigns for office, including, possibly, a bid the presidency in 2024. It may also be a final dig at the 1619 Project, a New York Times project that reframes American history around the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans, which Mr. Pompeo has criticized repeatedly.
The State Department declared on Tuesday that the Chinese government is committing genocide and crimes against humanity through its wide-scale repression of Uighurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in its northwestern region of Xinjiang, including in its use of internment camps and forced sterilization.
The move is expected to be the Trump administration’s final action on China, made on its last full day, and is the culmination of a yearslong debate over how to punish what many consider Beijing’s worst human rights abuses in decades. Relations between the countries have deteriorated over the past four years, and the new finding adds to a long list of tension points.
”I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uighurs by the Chinese party-state,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.
The determination of atrocities is a rare action on the part of the State Department, and could lead the United States to impose more sanctions against China under the new administration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who said last year through a spokesman that the policies by Beijing amounted to “genocide.” Other nations or international institutions could follow suit in formally criticizing China over its treatment of its minority Muslims and taking punitive measures.
The finding is the harshest denunciation yet by any government against China’s policies in Xinjiang. Genocide is, according to international convention, “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Janet L. Yellen, President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s nominee to be Treasury secretary, said at her confirmation hearing on Tuesday that investing in vaccine distribution and expanded jobless benefits will provide the biggest “bang” for the economy in a future stimulus package to help Americans get through the current “dark” economic time.
Speaking before the Senate Finance Committee, Ms. Yellen said that her core focus will be on helping struggling workers find good jobs and receive better wages, and she laid out the impact that the pandemic has had on the economy.
“It’s been particularly brutal in its impact on minorities and on women,” Ms. Yellen said.
The Treasury nominee said that additional stimulus measures should be focused on those who have been hardest hit and that expanding unemployment insurance and food stamps benefits would be a critical way to do this. The most pressing priority, however, is spending to ensure that the vaccine is quickly and widely distributed so that the pandemic can be ended and normal economic activity can resume, she said.
With Democrats set to take control of the Senate, the hearing lacked some of the contentiousness that was on display when Trump administration nominees sat for confirmation hearings.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the finance committee, said that “nobody could be better qualified for this job” than Ms. Yellen.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the current Republican chairman of the committee, pressed Ms. Yellen to ensure that the Biden administration does not raise taxes on the middle class and small businesses. He also urged her to cooperate transparently with Congressional oversight. However, he offered no critique about her qualifications for the job.
Yet areas of tension do exist, including the Biden administration’s plans to raise taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations and to increase spending to combat the pandemic.
Republican senators, including Mr. Grassley, asked Ms. Yellen to commit to not raising taxes on small businesses and also questioned whether she was going to roll back the 2017 tax package that President Trump pushed through without any Democratic support.
Ms. Yellen said that Mr. Biden does not plan to repeal the entire 2017 tax law, but that after the pandemic is over he will look to reverse provisions in the law that benefit the rich and big corporations.
Ms. Yellen demurred when asked whether she would oppose any effort to repeal a cap that lawmakers placed on state and local tax deductions as part of the 2017 tax overhaul. That limit has primarily hurt higher earners in high-tax, largely blue states and many Democrats have pushed to lift the cap.
Ms. Yellen said she believes “in a fair and progressive tax code where wealthy individuals and corporations pay their fair share” but that she would want to “study and evaluate what the impact has been on state and local governments” before making a decision.
Republicans also pressed Ms. Yellen on the federal deficit, which ballooned under Mr. Trump’s watch as he pushed through tax cuts and higher government spending even before the pandemic hit.
Ms. Yellen agreed that the “long-term fiscal trajectory is a cause for concern” but said the economy will suffer severe damage without more financial help during the pandemic.
“To avoid doing what we need to do now to address the pandemic and the economic damage that it’s causing would likely leave us in a worse place economically and with respect to our debt situation than doing what’s necessary,” she said.
Avril D. Haines, President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s nominee to be the next director of national intelligence, told senators on Tuesday that she would assist the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security with a public written assessment of the threat from QAnon.
The topic came up at Ms. Haines’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, nearly two weeks after the Capitol was infiltrated by a pro-Trump mob, including some followers of QAnon, a wide-ranging online conspiracy movement that has falsely claimed that President Trump is on a crusade to rid the world of satanic pedophiles organized by the Democratic Party and Hollywood celebrities.
Several Democratic senators on Tuesday asked Ms. Haines about the threat of right-wing extremist groups. In her responses, Ms. Haines had to walk a fine line, as the intelligence agencies are restricted in the information they can collect about Americans and American groups.
She said that if she was confirmed, she would make sure the intelligence agencies “look at connections between folks in the U.S. and externally and foreign,” but made clear that the F.B.I. and Homeland Security must take the lead on such investigations.
She also said that she would help establish a foreign malign influence center in the intelligence community.
Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, asked Ms. Haines about a letter he wrote to the F.B.I. and Homeland Security Department about QAnon’s “spread of disinformation.”
Mr. Heinrich asked Ms. Haines if she would commit to helping with that assessment. She said she would look for answers on how “foreign influence operations” are affecting QAnon.
“The intelligence community is focused on foreign intelligence and on foreign threats,” she said. “But there is a critical role that it can play and does play in supporting the work that’s done by others.”
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has tapped Pennsylvania’s secretary of health, Rachel Levine, to be assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services. She would be the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the Senate.
Mr. Biden has pledged to transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the United States and around the world that he will fight for their safety and dignity. His promise stands in stark contrast to the efforts of the Trump administration, which over the past four years has chipped away at protections.
In her current position, Dr. Levine has led Pennsylvania’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their ZIP code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond,” Mr. Biden said in a statement Tuesday. “She is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”
Under President Trump, Adm. Brett P. Giroir has held the position of assistant secretary of health at the Department of Health and Human Services and led the country’s Covid-19 testing efforts. Ahead of the holidays in December, Admiral Giroir encouraged people to avoid traveling if possible and to wear face masks — a position that has been mocked by Mr. Trump.
Georgia’s secretary of state on Tuesday certified the runoff election victories of Senators-elect Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, setting in motion the formal legal process that will seat the two Democrats and give their party control of the U.S. Senate for the first time since 2015.
The swearing-in of Mr. Ossoff and Mr. Warnock, which is expected to take place this week, will create a 50-50 tie in the Senate, giving Democrats de facto control of the chamber because the tiebreaking vote will be held by Kamala Harris, who will be sworn in as vice president on Wednesday. The two Georgia Democrats not only further empower President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., given that his party will now run both chambers of Congress, but also put Democrats in charge of running President Trump’s coming Senate impeachment trial.
Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, who like the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, is a Republican, is required by state law to sign off on the certification of the races. A representative of Georgia state government must then go to Washington to hand the certification documents over to the secretary of the Senate. The two senators-elect must also present their certificates of election and take their oaths of office in an open session of the Senate.
Despite a flurry of recent drama and unfounded allegations of voter fraud in Georgia, there was little doubt that Mr. Raffensperger would eventually certify the results of the Jan. 5 contests, in which Mr. Ossoff defeated David Perdue, a one-term Republican senator, and Mr. Warnock beat Kelly Loeffler, a Republican who was appointed by Mr. Kemp in December 2019.
Mr. Trump and his allies refused to accept that he lost the state to Mr. Biden in November and continued to vigorously press the unfounded allegation that he was the victim of a rigged election. That false narrative, which Mr. Trump pursued in failed court cases and in campaign appearances, quite likely ended up helping the two Democratic Senate candidates by depressing turnout in Georgia among those supporters of the president who saw no reason to vote in an electoral system that he was constantly maligning as untrustworthy.
The two Senate races presented a rare and remarkable drama in American politics, given Mr. Trump’s recalcitrance, Mr. Biden’s triumph and the effect that control of the Senate would most likely have on Mr. Biden’s initial policy agenda. Outside money poured into Georgia, making for the most expensive Senate races in U.S. history. Mr. Trump flew to the state and held big, well-attended rallies for Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler. But his message of support was often overtaken by his compulsion to air grievances about his own election.
The two Democrats vowed to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, support police reform and overhaul the national response to the coronavirus pandemic. The two Republicans darkly warned that Democratic victories would hasten a dangerous national slide into radical socialism.
William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said in an interview that was broadcast on Monday night that doubts raised about the legitimacy of the Nov. 3 election results “precipitated the riot” at the Capitol this month. But he would not say whether he believed that President Trump had incited the mob that ransacked the building, instead blaming free-speech issues and the news media.
Mr. Barr, who stepped down last month after pushing back on Mr. Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen from him, told the British news channel ITV that it was “unacceptable” that a pro-Trump mob broke into the Capitol building and disrupted proceedings to certify President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory.
The government “cannot tolerate violence interfering with the process of government,” Mr. Barr said. He called the riots that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, “despicable.”
But Mr. Barr did not discuss the role that he played in undermining the integrity of the election. He had spent months sowing concerns that the results would be rife with fraud because of the rise in the number of people voting by mail amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In public remarks before the election, Mr. Barr was among the most vocal opponents of mail-in ballots, a voting method used disproportionately by Democrats. Rather than offering proof that mail-in ballots encouraged fraud, he justified his claims by saying they were based on “common sense.”
“I don’t have empirical evidence other than the fact that we’ve always had voting fraud,” Mr. Barr said in September.
His comments set the groundwork for Mr. Trump’s false claims that Mr. Biden was not the rightful winner.
In the days after the election, Mr. Barr was silent on the issue, and he did not correct his earlier claims about fraud or encourage the public to accept the results. By the time he acknowledged in December that the Justice Department had found no evidence of voting fraud on a scale that could have affected the outcome, his earlier theories about election interference had metastasized.
In his ITV interview, Mr. Barr was unwilling to discuss any role that Mr. Trump might have played in the mob attack. “I leave it to the people who are looking into the genesis of this to say whether incitement was involved,” he said, not naming his former boss.
Mr. Barr also seemed to back away from a stronger statement he had made the day after the riot, when he told The Associated Press that Mr. Trump’s conduct was a “betrayal of his office and supporters.”
“Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable,” Mr. Barr told The A.P.
In a nod to longstanding complaints by conservatives that social media companies unfairly censor them, Mr. Barr also told ITV that “the suppression of free speech” was to blame for the riot. He said some people might resort to violence when they “lose confidence in the media.”
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. was expected to select a longtime career civil servant at the Justice Department to serve as the acting attorney general after he is sworn in on Wednesday, according to a person briefed on the decision.
Mr. Biden’s choice, Monty Wilkinson, has been overseeing human resources, security planning and the library at the Justice Department and is unknown even to most Washington insiders. That low profile all but guarantees that he was not involved in the myriad political scandals that defined the Justice Department under President Trump.
A spokesman for the Biden transition did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Before Mr. Wilkinson was reassigned to work in human resources under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, he worked in the department office that supports U.S. attorneys and their offices, as chief of staff and later as the director. He served as a counselor and deputy chief of staff to former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., and he worked as a prosecutor and career official in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington for several years.
With his decades of experience at the department and his familiarity with the nation’s 93 federal prosecutor’s offices, the Biden transition team hoped that Mr. Wilkinson would be a steady and drama-free hand who could run the Justice Department until Judge Merrick Garland, Mr. Biden’s nominee to be attorney general, could be confirmed in the coming weeks, according to a person briefed on the decision.
Federal prosecutors have unsealed the first conspiracy case against a suspected leader of the Oath Keepers — a right-wing militia that specializes in recruiting current and former police officers and members of the military — in connection with the Jan. 6 riot of Trump supporters at the Capitol.
In a criminal complaint and affidavit unsealed on Tuesday, Thomas Edward Caldwell, 65, of Clarke County in rural Virginia, was accused of conspiring to commit a federal offense, along with obstruction of an official proceeding, unlawful entry into a restricted building, and violent or disorderly conduct.
Prosecutors signaled that more such charges may be coming. While much of the riot was chaotic, the Oath Keepers have attracted scrutiny as a potential node of organized and premeditated violence. An F.B.I. affidavit against Mr. Caldwell noted that video from around the start of the melee showed a group of people wearing paramilitary clothing with Oath Keeper paraphernalia. Those people in the video, the affidavit says, “move in an organized and practiced fashion and force their way to the front of the crowd gathered around a door to the U.S. Capitol.”
That evening, it says, Mr. Caldwell sent a picture of the riot to someone on Facebook Messenger stating, “Us storming the castle” and “I am such an instigator!” He also wrote to someone, “We need to do this at the local level. Lets storm the capitol in Ohio. Tell me when!”
The affidavit also quotes a Facebook Message he had sent on New Year’s Day urging a group of militia members to book a room at a Comfort Inn in a suburb of Washington in northern Virginia, remarking, “This is a good location and would allow us to go hunting at night if we wanted to.”
Almost two months after resigning as New York City’s transportation commissioner, Polly Trottenberg has been nominated to become deputy secretary of the Transportation Department in the Biden administration.
Ms. Trottenberg led the city’s transportation efforts for seven years, including overseeing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero program to reduce traffic fatalities. She expanded the city’s bike and bus lanes, including the launch of the successful 14th Street busway in Manhattan. During the pandemic, she oversaw the city’s open streets program, which has reshaped the streetscape by closing off once car congested streets for walking, biking, and outdoor dining.
But Ms. Trottenberg has also faced pressure from transportation advocates and others who have complained that the city has not done enough to ensure street safety, especially as cycling deaths soared in recent years, and has not gone far enough to reimagine how the city’s 6,000 miles of streets could be used more efficiently to address growing congestion.
Ms. Trottenberg, who has been on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s transportation transition team, would serve under Pete Buttigieg, the former presidential candidate who has been nominated as Transportation secretary. She previously served as an assistant secretary for transportation policy and under secretary for policy in the Obama administration.
“Our nation needs a safe, equitable and environmentally sustainable transportation system that creates jobs and supports economic recovery,” Ms. Trottenberg tweeted Monday, adding that she looked forward to working alongside Mr. Buttigieg and the federal transportation agency “to build back better.”
