Trump still has power to make policy. Watch what he does - CNN

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The question for all Americans to consider is how long we must continue to pay attention to this man.

The long-term answer will depend very much on how long he continues to be the single mobilizing force for Republican voters. And, very long-term, there's not a lot of evidence that one-termers leave lasting impressions. Given the horrible silence among other top Republicans (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, notably) when it comes to affirming Biden's electoral victory, it could be a while. But let's talk when Trump's six months out of office.

The short-term answer is very different. Trump seems busy with tweeting, golfing and pushing fantasy fiction that he didn't lose the election. But the machinery of his government continues to move around him.

Diluting the power of undocumented immigrants. His lawyers were arguing before the US Supreme Court that he should be able to exclude undocumented immigrants from the Census count, a decision that runs counter to the language in the Constitution, but is a variation on the efforts to crack down on immigrants at a time when the GOP's political base appears to be shrinking. Even conservative Supreme Court justices were skeptical during arguments Monday, and it appeared they could punt. Read more.

Making it harder to become a citizen. The civics portion of the US Citizenship test is being updated from 100 questions to 128 beginning on December 1. See sample questions here.

Speeding up executions. The Justice Department will seek to speed up the death penalty for a handful of people on federal death row before January 20 and move forward with a new rule that opens the gate to potential firing squads. If these executions take place, it'll be the most during a presidential transition since 1884, according to the Death Penalty Information Project. It's a practice Trump revitalized and one that Biden would abolish. Read more.

Building the wall -- Most of the more than 400 miles that have been constructed during the Trump administration replace sections where previous barriers were falling down or outdated. But even with just 25 miles of new construction, according to the New York Times, the black line of wall that snakes along portions of the Southern border will be a legacy. And they describe a push to get as much done by January 20 as possible, although it's not clear exactly when or how Biden will move to halt construction. And it's very unlikely he'll be tearing any down. Read more.

Changing a host of rules. ProPublica has an excellent review of rules the administration is pushing through its executive authority. They would curb, for now, immigration and make it more difficult for the EPA to impose pollution restrictions, as well as allow the Department of Energy to roll back standards for washing machines, and others, and open up more federal land to oil and gas exploration just before Biden tries to move the country toward cleaner energy.

All of these things will take time for Biden and his team to unwind, if they decide to do so.

Over on Capitol Hill, things are coming to a head. A Covid-19 stimulus proposal for more aid and a new round of stimulus checks is in limbo, perhaps until Biden takes office, but Trump's signature will be needed on a massive government spending bill to keep the government running. He's said before he dislikes these bills.

Related: Don't expect a second stimulus check this year

Trump also dislikes the bipartisan defense authorization bill, which sets policy for the Pentagon, because it opens the door to renaming US military bases currently named for confederate generals -- Ft. Hood, for instance.

But there's a LOT for this Congress to get through and not much time left to do it. Read more.

: Georgia means everything for Biden's presidency

What the next president can accomplish will have everything to do with the twin Senate races in Georgia. It's hard to overstate how important a Senate majority would be to Biden's plans -- or even filling his Cabinet with who he wants.

All of these things could go one way if McConnell's in charge of the Senate and a very different way if it's Chuck Schumer:

Cabinet. For instance, there are rumblings that his preferred Office of Management and Budget Director, the liberal think tank leader Neera Tanden, could face a GOP blockade. She's been on the record criticizing Republicans for years, and if Republicans run the Senate, she'll need at least a few Republicans to support her. Read more.

Undoing Trump rules. Addressing last minute Trump administration rules will be much easier if it can be done by Congress. It'll be more time consuming to do things administratively.

Fixing Obamacare. If the Supreme Court invalidates the Affordable Care Act (or even if he doesn't) what Biden can do about health care depends very much on who controls the Senate.

Addressing the Covid economy. What stimulus proposal Biden can entertain will look very different coming out of a Senate where Democrats control the chamber compared to one where McConnell decides what gets a vote.

Building back better. The aforementioned items are relatively small bore when put up against the climate crisis and how or even whether to do anything. GOP orthodoxy right now is that climate change is not something that should be addressed by government. Democrats side with scientists that think it's an existential threat.

Biden wants to rewire the entire US economy around clean energy. He might not be able to do much with the filibuster in place, but he can obviously do more with a more friendly majority.

: The GOP rift on elections is something to watch in Georgia

Republicans need to win those Senate seats as much as Democrats do if they want to block Biden's plans, which makes it all the more telling that Trump and his campaign continue to try to get the presidential results overturned rather than focusing on getting out the vote for the Senate races. Trump's campaign again tried to get Republican officials in Georgia to undermine the results by questioning mail-in ballots. They were again rebuffed. The latest recount there should be done by Wednesday. But the rift between Republicans committed to honoring voters at the state level and the White House, which is still trying to ignore them, is an incredible thing to watch.

Disconnected. When Trump travels to Georgia to campaign for the Republican Senate candidates there -- Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue -- he'll be simultaneously saying the vote that cost him the White House was fraudulent (it wasn't) and that Republicans should take part in that fraudulent system.

Arizona certification. The state handed Biden 11 electoral votes and, more importantly, cleared the way for Mark Kelly, the new Democratic senator, to be sworn in Wednesday.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of David Perdue, the senator from Georgia.

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Dr. Scott Atlas, Special Coronavirus Advisor To Trump Resigns - NPR

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White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, pictured in September, made numerous political blunders during his brief tenure, including a lengthy interview with Russian state media that ran just days before the U.S. presidential election. Evan Vucci/AP

Evan Vucci/AP

A controversial coronavirus advisor to the president, Dr. Scott Atlas, resigned Monday, a White House official told NPR.

Atlas, who is not an infectious disease expert and whose brief stint was marred by blunders and controversy, was tapped by the Trump administration to serve as Special Advisor to the President of the United States, in August. Since then, "the MRI guy" has repeatedly been at odds with the nation's leading health officials regarding his views on how to combat the spread of the virus, including members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

But throughout his tenure, he has insisted all of the guidance he's offered was based on scientific research.

"I worked hard with a singular focus—to save lives and help Americans through this pandemic," Atlas wrote in a resignation letter posted to Twitter.

He added that he "always relied on the latest science and evidence, without any political consideration or influence."

Honored to have served @realDonaldTrump and the American people during these difficult times. pic.twitter.com/xT1hRoYBMh

— Scott W. Atlas (@ScottWAtlas) December 1, 2020

"As time went on, like all scientists and health policy scholars, I learned new information and synthesized the latest data from around the world, all in an effort to provide you with the best information to serve the greater public good," Atlas wrote.

Fox News reported that Atlas' role was set to expire at the end of the week.

Trump was attracted to Atlas' views, which put the economy first, but public health experts were appalled by his lack of scientific rigor.

Among the theories that most worried experts is Atlas' belief that allowing the coronavirus to spread would eventually result in "herd immunity," describing it as a "basic principle" of biology and immunology.

As NPR reported:

"In April on the conservative Steve Deace Show, Atlas spoke in favor of allowing the virus to pass through the younger segments of the population, while trying to protect older Americans.

" 'We can allow a lot of people to get infected,' he said. 'Those who are not at risk to die or have a serious hospital-requiring illness, we should be fine with letting them get infected, generating immunity on their own, and the more immunity in the community, the better we can eradicate the threat of the virus.' "

Atlas' field of expertise is in magnetic resonance imaging. He wrote a book on the subject and co-authored numerous scientific studies on the economics of medical imaging technology. He was also a professor and chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center from 1998 to 2012, according to a university biography.

"He's an MRI guy ... He has no expertise in any of this stuff," Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health told NPR, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed nearly 267,000 people in the U.S.

"He's been bringing out arguments that have been refuted week after week, month after month, since the beginning of this outbreak," Jha added.

Atlas also made numerous political blunders during his brief stint, including a lengthy interview with Russian state media that ran just days before the U.S. presidential election.

He later apologized for the misstep saying he "was unaware they are a registered foreign agent."

"I regret doing the interview and apologize for allowing myself to be taken advantage of," Atlas said in a tweet. "I especially apologize to the national security community who is working hard to defend us."

And earlier this month, Stanford University appeared to distance itself from Atlas following his remarks that residents of Michigan should "rise up" against the state's new coronavirus restrictions.

Atlas took a leave of absence from his position as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative-leaning think tank based at the university, to serve as an advisor to the president.

As recently as late October, Atlas was believed to be among Trump and the Vice President Mike Pence's closest advisors on the pandemic, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told NPR.

Atlas has been highly critical of the lockdowns enforced by various state and municipal leaders — a strategy he continued to oppose in his farewell letter.

Since Atlas began his job in August, nearly one hundred thousand people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S.

Atlas did have encouraging words for the incoming Biden Administration.

"I sincerely wish the new team all the best as they guide the nation through these trying, polarized times," Atlas wrote. "With the emerging treatments and vaccines, I remain highly optimistic that America will thrive once again and overcome the adversity of the pandemic and all that it has entailed."

NPR's Geoff Brumfiel contributed to this report.

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Engineers combine light and sound to see underwater - Science Daily

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Stanford University engineers have developed an airborne method for imaging underwater objects by combining light and sound to break through the seemingly impassable barrier at the interface of air and water.

The researchers envision their hybrid optical-acoustic system one day being used to conduct drone-based biological marine surveys from the air, carry out large-scale aerial searches of sunken ships and planes, and map the ocean depths with a similar speed and level of detail as Earth's landscapes. Their "Photoacoustic Airborne Sonar System" is detailed in a recent study published in the journal IEEE Access.

"Airborne and spaceborne radar and laser-based, or LIDAR, systems have been able to map Earth's landscapes for decades. Radar signals are even able to penetrate cloud coverage and canopy coverage. However, seawater is much too absorptive for imaging into the water," said study leader Amin Arbabian, an associate professor of electrical engineering in Stanford's School of Engineering. "Our goal is to develop a more robust system which can image even through murky water."

Subhead: Energy loss

Oceans cover about 70 percent of the Earth's surface, yet only a small fraction of their depths have been subjected to high-resolution imaging and mapping.

The main barrier has to do with physics: Sound waves, for example, cannot pass from air into water or vice versa without losing most -- more than 99.9 percent -- of their energy through reflection against the other medium. A system that tries to see underwater using soundwaves traveling from air into water and back into air is subjected to this energy loss twice -- resulting in a 99.9999 percent energy reduction.

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Similarly, electromagnetic radiation -- an umbrella term that includes light, microwave and radar signals -- also loses energy when passing from one physical medium into another, although the mechanism is different than for sound. "Light also loses some energy from reflection, but the bulk of the energy loss is due to absorption by the water," explained study first author Aidan Fitzpatrick, a Stanford graduate student in electrical engineering. Incidentally, this absorption is also the reason why sunlight can't penetrate to the ocean depth and why your smartphone -- which relies on cellular signals, a form of electromagnetic radiation -- can't receive calls underwater.

The upshot of all of this is that oceans can't be mapped from the air and from space in the same way that the land can. To date, most underwater mapping has been achieved by attaching sonar systems to ships that trawl a given region of interest. But this technique is slow and costly, and inefficient for covering large areas.

Subhead: An invisible jigsaw puzzle

Enter the Photoacoustic Airborne Sonar System (PASS), which combines light and sound to break through the air-water interface. The idea for it stemmed from another project that used microwaves to perform "non-contact" imaging and characterization of underground plant roots. Some of PASS's instruments were initially designed for that purpose in collaboration with the lab of Stanford electrical engineering professor Butrus Khuri-Yakub.

At its heart, PASS plays to the individual strengths of light and sound. "If we can use light in the air, where light travels well, and sound in the water, where sound travels well, we can get the best of both worlds," Fitzpatrick said.

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To do this, the system first fires a laser from the air that gets absorbed at the water surface. When the laser is absorbed, it generates ultrasound waves that propagate down through the water column and reflect off underwater objects before racing back toward the surface.

The returning sound waves are still sapped of most of their energy when they breach the water surface, but by generating the sound waves underwater with lasers, the researchers can prevent the energy loss from happening twice.

"We have developed a system that is sensitive enough to compensate for a loss of this magnitude and still allow for signal detection and imaging," Arbabian said.

The reflected ultrasound waves are recorded by instruments called transducers. Software is then used to piece the acoustic signals back together like an invisible jigsaw puzzle and reconstruct a three-dimensional image of the submerged feature or object.

"Similar to how light refracts or 'bends' when it passes through water or any medium denser than air, ultrasound also refracts," Arbabian explained. "Our image reconstruction algorithms correct for this bending that occurs when the ultrasound waves pass from the water into the air."

Subhead: Drone ocean surveys

Conventional sonar systems can penetrate to depths of hundreds to thousands of meters, and the researchers expect their system will eventually be able to reach similar depths.

To date, PASS has only been tested in the lab in a container the size of a large fish tank. "Current experiments use static water but we are currently working toward dealing with water waves," Fitzpatrick said. "This is a challenging but we think feasible problem."

The next step, the researchers say, will be to conduct tests in a larger setting and, eventually, an open-water environment.

"Our vision for this technology is on-board a helicopter or drone," Fitzpatrick said. "We expect the system to be able to fly at tens of meters above the water."

See video: https://youtu.be/2YyAnxQkeuk

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Kentucky Hopes to Send Seniors Out in Style - University of Kentucky Athletics - UKAthletics

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Football 11/30/2020 2:09:00 PM Tim Letcher

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Kentucky's football senior class will play its final home game on Saturday when the Cats host South Carolina at Kroger Field. The 2020 seniors have played a huge role in building the program to a high level during their time in Lexington.

Counting this and the previous three, Kentucky has won 28 games in a four-year span. The Cats have been to three bowl games, winning the Citrus Bowl following the 2018 season and winning the Belk Bowl last year. That 2018 team also won 10 games and had one of the best seasons in Kentucky football history.

UK head coach Mark Stoops knows how vital this group has been to the program.

"I appreciate our seniors. This is their last game for them to play at home," Stoops said. "Hopefully, we'll send them off the right way. They've been very instrumental in us winning a lot of football games over the past several years. I want to say how much I respect and appreciate our seniors."

The core of the Big Blue Wall is a group of this year's seniors. That includes Luke Fortner, Drake Jackson, Darian Kinnard and Landon Young. Stoops had very high praise for that group.

"Luke, Drake, Landon and Darian, those three guys and Darian have been rock solid for many years and have meant an awful lot to the program," Stoops said. "You cannot ask for better young men than the four. Incredible people, great leaders, work extremely hard on that field every day and have come to play every day for a long time. Very appreciative of them."

Stoops also had high praise for senior quarterback Terry Wilson, who has been behind center for many big wins during his three years in Lexington. Stoops was asked how Wilson should be remembered.

"I think it should be that he did everything he could for this program," Stoops said. "He's a young man that helped us win 10 games (in 2018) and there's no taking that away from him. Terry is a guy who laid it all out on the line for his team each week. He came back from a very serious injury and he gave it everything he has."

With the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year's seniors would potentially be allowed to come back and play another season. That's not something Stoops has addressed with the group to this point.

"The seniors, we will have some discussions next week, I'm waiting until the season is over," Stoops said. "We'll address all of that next week. I've had brief conversations with some of them."

As for Saturday's game against South Carolina, Stoops wants to see his team play a full, 60-minute game.

"(We) didn't play a good second half (at Florida), that needs to be addressed," Stoops said. "We've got to work extremely hard this week to make sure we play a complete game and finish and play two halves of quality football."

The Gamecocks come into Saturday's game with a 2-7 record. South Carolina, which fired Will Muschamp earlier in the season and is now under the direction of Mike Bobo, has lost five straight games, including a 45-16 loss to Georgia on Saturday.

Stoops is hoping that his team can finish the regular season in fine fashion.

"You definitely want to end the right way, it is important to go out with a win," Stoops said. "It's a big game for many reasons."

And one of the biggest reasons is to give the 2020 senior class a win in their final game at Kroger Field.

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A Responsible Withdrawal From Afghanistan - The New York Times

For years, the stalemate in Afghanistan has left American officials torn between two bad options: Prop up a corrupt, hopelessly divided Afghan government indefinitely or admit defeat and go home, leaving the country to its fate. At 19 years and counting, the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan is already the longest war in American history. A consensus has been forming that it is time for U.S. troops to come home. But the speed of the withdrawal and whether any residual force will be left behind to carry out counterterrorism operations remain open questions.

The Trump administration has taken laudable steps toward a U.S. exit. In February, it struck a deal with the Taliban to withdraw American forces from the country within 14 months. In exchange, the Taliban agreed to cut ties with Al Qaeda, prevent terrorists from using Afghanistan as a base for international attacks, help reduce violence and participate in talks with Afghanistan’s political leadership to try to end the conflict.

American diplomats have been pressing the Taliban to live up to their end of the bargain. Qaeda fighters are still believed to be embedded with the Taliban, although Al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, may now be dead, according to Pakistani media. Intra-Afghan peace talks began in Doha, the capital of Qatar, in September but have stalled over a fresh wave of attacks and uncertainty over whether the Biden administration will honor the deal with the Taliban. Over the weekend, the Taliban announced on social media that both sides had agreed to a set of guiding principles for the talks, but President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan has reportedly pushed back on that claim, denying that an agreement has been reached.

The two sides have yet to begin confronting a host of seemingly irreconcilable differences, including whether to be a theocracy or a republic, and the status of women and followers of the Shiite sect of Islam. The Taliban claim that they now accept Shiites as fellow Muslims. But previously Taliban leaders have justified persecuting them as infidels. In 1998, Taliban commanders massacred thousands of Hazaras, an ethnic minority that predominantly follows Shiite Islam, when they took power in their region. Today, two commanders of that bloody operation are among the Taliban negotiators in Doha. Some Hazaras fear the Taliban are simply going through the motions of peace talks until U.S. forces leave.

Efforts to hold the Taliban accountable for their commitments have been undercut by the Trump administration’s abrupt announcement that it will pull all but 2,500 American troops out of the country by Jan. 15, regardless of whether the conditions the Taliban agreed to have been met. President Trump, who spent Thanksgiving 2019 with U.S. soldiers at Bagram Airfield, wants to keep a promise to bring American soldiers home before he leaves office. But NATO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, expressed alarm at Mr. Trump’s announcement and said the alliance would continue to train Afghan security forces even with the planned U.S. reductions. NATO has 12,000 personnel in the country, about half of whom are often American troops, and relies heavily on the U.S. military for transportation and logistics.

President-elect Joe Biden is unlikely to depart radically from the Trump administration’s exit plan. Mr. Biden opposed the Obama-era surge in Afghanistan and wrote in the spring in Foreign Affairs magazine that “it is past time to end the forever wars.”

But an American withdrawal does not have to mean ending financial support for the Afghan people or leaving the region in chaos. The United States has a moral obligation to work with regional partners to try to clean up the mess we are leaving behind.

Americans have the geopolitical luxury of flying away from a war they plunged into in 2001 in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Afghanistan’s neighbors do not. Six countries share a border with Afghanistan. Not one wants a failed state on its doorstep. Afghanistan has been at war almost continuously since 1978, partly because its powerful neighbors have all tried to manage the chaos inside it by funding proxies. A debilitating free-for-all might be prevented if Afghanistan’s neighbors work together to support a peace process.

This is a rare instance where Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and the United States all share a common interest: the orderly departure of American troops and preventing Afghanistan from imploding.

Mr. Trump, who has a well-known allergy to multilateral cooperation and a zero-sum mentality toward Iran and China, has been unable to fully engage Afghanistan’s neighbors in the effort to stabilize the country. In March 2019, American diplomats threatened to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution renewing the mandate of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan because it referred to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. And the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran scared off international investors in Chabahar, an Iranian port considered essential for increasing trade in landlocked Afghanistan.

Barnett Rubin, a former State Department official who is now the director of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Regional Project at New York University, argues that the United States would benefit from having a strategic vision for the region that was bigger than “no Al Qaeda.”

“Stop looking at Afghanistan as either ‘war on terror’ or nothing and broaden the aperture to see that it is a country in a region with China, Russia, Iran, India and Pakistan — four nuclear powers,” he said. “They all have a very strong interest in trying to stabilize Afghanistan. Even though they want our troops out, they are worried we are doing it too quickly.”

The Biden administration is better positioned to test the limits of regional diplomacy. While it is far from clear that Afghan talks can negotiate a political settlement that will end the war between the Taliban and the Afghan government, a coordinated regional approach is more likely to produce success than a rapid unilateral American withdrawal. American soldiers should not be held hostage to a peace agreement that might never come. But with U.S. troops down to 2,500 soldiers, some portion of which is needed as a security umbrella for the embassy, the costs of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan have fallen sharply. The Biden administration has time to craft a more responsible withdrawal.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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Dr. Scott Atlas resigns from Trump administration - CNN

A source familiar with what happened told CNN that Atlas turned in his resignation letter to President Donald Trump on Monday. As a special government employee, Atlas had a 130-day window in which he could serve and that window was technically coming to a close this week.

Atlas tweeted out a photo of his resignation letter later Monday. In the letter, he said his "advice was always focused on minimizing all the harms from both the pandemic and the structural policies themselves, especially to the working class and the poor."

"I sincerely wish the new team all the best as they guide the nation through these trying, polarized times," he wrote, apparently referring to President-elect Joe Biden's incoming coronavirus team.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A source close to the task force told CNN on Monday that Atlas' departure comes as welcome news, as his discredited theories will no longer have a seat at the table. A separate official said the task force remains intact following Atlas' departure.

Atlas' months-long stint in the White House was marked by controversy as he became a close adviser to Trump on the pandemic, adopting public stances on the virus much closer to the President's -- including decrying the idea that schools cannot reopen this fall as "hysteria" and pushing for the resumption of college sports.

In one extraordinary episode in October, Twitter removed a tweet from Atlas that sought to undermine the importance of face masks because it was in violation of the platform's Covid-19 Misleading Information Policy, according to a spokesman for the company.

And earlier this month, he criticized coronavirus restrictions in Michigan, urging residents in the state to "rise up" against the measures. The comments came weeks after officials thwarted an alleged domestic terrorism kidnapping plot against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who herself has been the subject of harsh criticism from the President and other Republicans amid the pandemic.

Atlas was not on a call Vice President Mike Pence held on Monday with state leaders, according to a list of participants. During the call, Pence and members of the task force focused on vaccine safety and distribution as Covid-19 cases skyrocket across the country, according to his office.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond and Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.

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Justices skeptical of Trump bid to exclude all undocumented immigrants from census - ABC News

Removing immigrants from the count would affect seats in Congress, federal funds

November 30, 2020, 7:21 PM

• 6 min read

President Donald Trump's sweeping order to exclude undocumented immigrants "to the maximum extent feasible" from the 2020 census faced skepticism Monday from a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, even as several key justices showed openness to affording Trump some discretion in a tally that could have a major political impact.

By subtracting millions of immigrants from the census total, Trump hopes to shape the apportionment of congressional seats, the allocation of billions in federal funds and the contours of the nation's electoral map for at least the next decade. If he succeeds, it would be the first time in 230 years that the process would exclude large swaths of people inside the U.S.

"A lot of the historical evidence and longstanding practice really cuts against your position," Justice Amy Coney Barrett told Trump acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall during oral arguments.

The Constitution requires an "actual enumeration" -- or, census -- be performed every 10 years to account for changes in population and that decennial redistricting be based on "the whole number of persons in each state," regardless of citizenship or immigration status.

"There's evidence that in the founding era, an inhabitant was a dweller who lives or resides in a place," Barrett said. "If an undocumented person has been in the country for 20 years, even if illegally, as you say, why would some person not have a -- such a person not have a settled residence here?"

Wall argued that Trump has discretion to exclude "at least some illegal aliens," especially those without deep ties to the country such as those caught recently crossing the border or others in ICE detention slated for removal. But Wall could not specify how Trump might draw the line or how many undocumented immigrants fall into each subcategory proposed by the administration.

In this April 23, 2019, file photo, demonstrators rally at the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC., to protest a proposal to add a citizenship question in the 2020 Census.

The uncertainty challenged the justices as they tried to chart a resolution.

"I find the posture of this case quite frustrating," said Justice Samuel Alito. "It could be that we're dealing a possibility that is quite important. It could be that this is much ado about very little. It depends on what the Census Bureau and the Department of Commerce are able to do."

Some justices suggested the court should possibly wait to rule until after the count is complete and apportionment of congressional seats comes into focus.

"We don't know what the president is going to do, how many aliens will be excluded. We don't know what the effect of that would be on apportionment. All these questions would be resolved if we wait until the apportionment takes place," Chief Justice John Roberts said.

Dale Ho, the ACLU attorney challenging the Trump order, countered that there is "at least a substantial risk of a shift in the apportionment now" that warranted immediate action by the court.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh called the case against a "categorical exclusion of all unlawful non-citizens" from the census "forceful," but suggested Trump could potentially revise his order.

"Couldn't he substitute a new policy," Kavanaugh said, "by saying we're going to exclude some subsets (of undocumented immigrants) and then there'll be litigation on that and we'll be right back here?"

"Whether or not that particular policy would be lawful is a different question," replied Ho.

In this Aug. 29, 2020, file photo, the Supreme Court of the United States is seen in Washington, D.C.

Justices Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor suggested that they see the text of the Constitution and federal law as clearly requiring a fully inclusive census count for purposes of apportionment.

"The census says 'where you're living,'" said Sotomayor. "I'm not sure how you can identify any class of immigrant that isn't living here in a traditional sense. This is where they are."

New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood agreed.

"You cannot declare them to be gone," she said of undocumented immigrants. "Their undocumented status doesn't remove their presence."

New York is one of 20 states asking the court for a swift decision before Trump, by law, must deliver his apportionment report to Congress in early January.

"So apportionment already begins," Sotomayor said of the rapidly progressing timeline. "We'd have to unscramble the egg" if the court waits.

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Supreme Court skeptical of Trump's plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from census - NBC News

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The Supreme Court seemed wary Monday of approving President Donald Trump's plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census figures that are used to calculate each state's representation in Congress and share of billions of dollars from a host of federal programs.

But it was unclear after 90 minutes of oral argument exactly how the court would deal with the issue given that the Census Bureau concedes that it has no idea yet how many people would be excluded or when it will have the answer. The justices appeared to be reluctant to act immediately to block the plan.

"Career experts at the Census Bureau confirmed with me that they still don't know even roughly how many illegal aliens they will be able to identify, let alone how their number and geographic concentration may affect apportionment," said acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, the government's chief lawyer.

Oct. 17, 202000:25

Lawyers for the states that oppose the plan and groups affected by it told the justices that it would shift money and political power away from states with large immigrant populations and that it would violate the Constitution and federal law.

The Constitution requires a census every 10 years, and the results determine how many members of Congress each state gets in the House of Representatives. The data are also used to calculate local governments' share of $1.5 trillion under many federal programs.

Trump issued a memo in July that said people who are undocumented shouldn't be included in the final count. Under his plan, the Census Bureau would report two sets of figures to the White House — one including everyone who was counted and another allowing him to leave out undocumented immigrants. The president could then report the smaller number to Congress for use in reapportionment.

Trump's memo said states with policies "that encourage illegal aliens to enter this country and that hobble federal efforts to enforce the immigration laws passed by the Congress should not be rewarded with greater representation in the House of Representatives."

California, Florida and Texas would each lose one seat in the House, and Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio would each keep a seat they would otherwise lose to population shifts, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. Other predictions show Arizona losing a seat, too, and Montana gaining one.

The states would lose equal numbers of Electoral College votes, which are based on the size of their House delegations.

"The memorandum treats counting people as a reward to be withheld from states that house undocumented immigrants, even though our laws view counting people for apportionment as fact-finding, not giving or withholding a reward," New York's solicitor general, Barbara Underwood, told the court.

Wall said that federal law gives the president authority to direct how the census is conducted and that the term in the Constitution, which says the census must count "the whole number of persons in each state," has been generally understood to mean usual residents.

But several members of the court, including some conservative justices, seemed to doubt that the president had such sweeping power to modify the census results.

"If an undocumented person has been in the country for, say, 20 years, even if illegally, why would such a person not have a settled residence?" asked Amy Coney Barrett, the newest justice.

The court struggled, however, with what to do. Some justice suggested waiting until the Census Bureau transmits the figures to the White House or until the president gives Congress the population data to be used for figuring how many seats each state gets in the House.

Wall counseled waiting. "Based on my understanding from the Census Bureau, there is a real prospect that the numbers will not affect the apportionment," he said.

The court took the case on a fast track in order to issue a decision before the president is required to submit the census report to Congress in early January.

Pete Williams

Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent who covers the Justice Department and the Supreme Court, based in Washington.

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Baltimore Ravens-Pittsburgh Steelers game postponed again, to Wednesday at 3:40 p.m. ET - ESPN

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5:05 PM ET

OWINGS MILLS, Md. -- The COVID-19 outbreak in Baltimore has led to the Ravens-Steelers game being postponed to Wednesday.

The game is scheduled to kick off at 3:40 p.m. ET. It becomes the first game of the NFL season to get postponed three times. The game is kicking off at 3:40 p.m. because NBC, which is broadcasting the game, wanted to honor its commitment to broadcast the 88th Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Wednesday night, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter.

With the latest postponement, the Steelers' Week 13 game on Sunday against the Washington Football Team will now be played Monday at 5 p.m. ET, and the Ravens' Week 13 game against the Dallas Cowboys, which had already been moved once to Dec. 7, will now be played Tuesday, Dec. 8, at 8:05 p.m. ET.

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"These decisions were made out of an abundance of caution to ensure the health and safety of players, coaches and game day personnel and in consultation with medical experts," the NFL said in a statement.

The Week 12 game between the Ravens and Steelers that was originally scheduled for Thanksgiving night -- and was moved to Sunday and then Tuesday night -- was shifted for the third time. This will mark the NFL's first game on Wednesday since the 2012 season opener between the Cowboys and New York Giants, which was scheduled for that day to avoid a conflict with President Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday.

The latest postponement came after the Ravens players said Monday in a teleconference meeting that they did not want to play Tuesday because of concerns over safety. Baltimore had another positive test on Monday, making it nine straight days with at least one player testing positive. The source added that one suggestion from the players was to move the game to Thursday, but the NFL compromised by shifting it to Wednesday.

The Ravens will hold a walk-through Monday night and could hold another one before departing for Pittsburgh on Tuesday. Baltimore hasn't had a full practice since Nov. 20, a span of 10 days.

For the Ravens, Monday was perhaps the strangest day in what has been one of the most challenging weeks in franchise history. Players had reported to the team facility about a half hour before the scheduled 9:30 a.m. practice when the NFL canceled it to wait for the latest test results, a source said. The Ravens waited most of the day not knowing whether they would practice again that afternoon and board a plane to play the NFL's only undefeated team. The day ended with the game between AFC North rivals getting moved for the third time in six days.

Baltimore is in the midst of one of the largest outbreaks in professional sports. The Ravens have had 22 players test positive or get identified as a high-risk close contact over the past nine days. Right now, Baltimore has 38 players on its 53-man roster.

At least a dozen Ravens players have tested positive, including reigning NFL MVP Lamar Jackson along with five Pro Bowl players: defensive end Calais Campbell, tight end Mark Andrews, outside linebacker Matthew Judon, running back Mark Ingram and fullback Patrick Ricard.

The Ravens still have 20 players on the reserve/COVID-19 list. Baltimore added four players (Andrews, Judon, wide receiver Willie Snead IV and cornerback Terrell Bonds) and removed four players (outside linebacker Jaylon Ferguson, offensive lineman D.J. Fluker, cornerback Iman Marshall and defensive tackle Broderick Washington). Marshall will revert to injured reserve.

The Ravens now have 38 players on their 53-man roster after guard Tyre Phillips (shoulder) was activated off injured reserve and cornerback Davontae Harris was officially signed.

Monday's round of Ravens tests produced one new positive result, but it's a player on injured reserve who hasn't had close contact with anyone else, a source told ESPN's Dan Graziano.

The only other game this season that had previously been postponed twice was a Week 5 game between the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots. Positive coronavirus tests in New England pushed that game from Oct. 11 to Oct. 12 before it was played on Oct. 18.

The Ravens-Steelers game becomes the second Wednesday game in the NFL since 1948. The last one before the 2012 season opener was Sept. 22, 1948, when the Los Angeles Rams played the Detroit Lions.

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Salesforce's Talks to Buy Slack May Herald More Work-From-Home Deals - The New York Times

The latest target in a work-from-home buying spree?Credit...Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Salesforce and the future of remote work

Salesforce has approached Slack about a deal, DealBook hears, confirming a report in The Wall Street Journal. A takeover could be announced as soon as this week. The potential deal is a bet on remote working, an area that bankers tell us will be a hot spot for consolidation in the months ahead, as highly valued software companies look to roll up the fragmented market for collaboration tools.

Work practices may never return to pre-pandemic norms. Or at least that’s the premise behind moves like the one Salesforce is making, with companies hoping to cash in on the shift by assembling a suite of services to make remote working easier. Slack had a market capitalization of about $17 billion before news of the potential deal broke, and it’s now worth around $23 billion. Until the recent pop, it had recorded relatively muted growth in its share price, perhaps because its videoconferencing tools have lagged rivals like Zoom and Microsoft.

Who’s next? Many software companies are riding high with surging stock prices, sitting on large cash piles and able to tap more capital easily if they need to. In addition to Salesforce, bankers say potential buyers include Adobe (which bought Workfront earlier this month), Twilio (purchaser of Segment and Sendgrid) and ServiceNow. Potential targets include Airtable, Asana, Box, DocuSign, Dropbox and Smartsheet. These deals won’t be cheap, but as the shares of buyers rise in tandem with targets, that may simply mean more stock-for-stock deals.

Microsoft is the elephant in the (virtual) room. The computing giant’s Office software is already installed on most workplace computers, which makes it easy to integrate its Slack-like collaboration tool, Teams. (Slack contends in an antitrust suit against Microsoft in Europe that its bundling of Teams with Office is anticompetitive.) Microsoft has been acquisitive throughout the pandemic, trying to scoop up TikTok and announcing a deal to buy the gaming company Zenimax Media. It may face more regulatory scrutiny than rivals, but it can certainly afford plenty more purchases. It’s sitting on roughly $136 billion in cash and it is one of the few companies with a AAA credit rating.

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

S&P Global agrees to buy IHS Markit. The transaction, worth about $44 billion, will combine two of the world’s biggest financial data providers. It’s the latest move to capitalize on the value of data, following the London Stock Exchange’s $27 billion offer for the analytics firm Refinitiv, Intercontinental Exchange’s $11 billion purchase of Ellie Mae and others.

New York City will reopen public elementary schools. The abrupt reversal came after Mayor Bill de Blasio was criticized for shutting the nation’s biggest school system, while letting businesses like indoor restaurant dining stay open. Middle and high schools will remain shut.

The E.U. plans to ask the U.S. to form an alliance to stand up to China. The bloc will call on America to set aside differences on trade and global taxes to create a unified approach on regulations and overhauling the World Health Organization, The Financial Times reports.

Nike and Coke lobby against a bill that would ban imports from the Xianjiang region of China. They are among several big companies pushing to weaken the legislation, which would prohibit goods made with forced labor by persecuted Muslim minorities in the region. Opponents of the bill say they oppose human rights violations but also fear disrupted supply chains.

The longtime business partner of Robert Smith resigns. Brian Sheth, the president and co-founder of Vista Equity Partners, announced his departure on Thanksgiving, a month after Mr. Smith agreed to pay $140 million to settle a federal investigation into a scheme to evade taxes.

Biden’s economic team takes shape

President-elect Joe Biden is set to name more of his economic team this week, and his likely choices imply the continuation of two themes: a focus on progressive labor economics, and picks that may upset the left wing of his party.

Cecilia Rouse, the Princeton economist, is expected to run the Council of Economic Advisers, with Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey also serving on the group. The labor-focused economists — along with Janet Yellen as Treasury secretary — suggest a “strong focus on worker empowerment as a tool for economic growth,” The Times’s Alan Rappeport writes.

Other picks may be more contentious. Mr. Biden has chosen Brian Deese, who helped lead the Obama administration’s auto bailout and advised on climate change, to lead the National Economic Council. He has also picked Adewale Adeyemo, who helped negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as deputy Treasury secretary.

• Both have spent time at the investment giant BlackRock, potentially making them problematic to progressives urging Mr. Biden to avoid picks from the corporate world. Such ties may make it “less likely that the federal government will rein in BlackRock as it should be,” Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project told Politico.

And then there’s Neera Tanden. Ms. Tanden, the head of the Center for American Progress, the left-leaning think tank, is Mr. Biden’s pick to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget. Conservatives and progressives alike are wary of Ms. Tanden, who’s close to Hillary Clinton. A former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, suggested she may be a “sacrifice to the confirmation gods,” meaning she could be set up to take the heat while other nominees pass the Senate.

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Black Friday’s online bonanza

According to Adobe Analytics, American consumers spent $9 billion at online retailers on Friday. That was nearly 22 percent higher than Black Friday last year, boosted by shoppers staying away from malls and big-box stores for health reasons. Indeed, Facteus, a research firm that monitors card payments, recorded a huge gap between online and offline sales activity on Black Friday that was especially stark at department stores and electronics retailers. It’s no wonder that Amazon has been adding 1,400 new workers per day this year.

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The week ahead

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court considers arguments on President Trump’s order to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census count used to allocate House seats. On Tuesday, the high court will hear a case in which former child slaves in Ivory Coast have sued Nestlé over alleged human rights violations at cocoa farms.

Fresh from their disagreement over the use of funds designated for pandemic stimulus programs, the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the Fed chairman, Jay Powell, will testify before Congress about … pandemic stimulus programs. They appear in the Senate on Tuesday and the House on Wednesday.

Tech companies are on deck for earnings, with Zoom reporting today, Box and Salesforce on Tuesday, and Snowflake on Wednesday.

The U.S. employment report due Friday is expected to show that 500,000 jobs were added in November, less than the 638,000 gained in October, a potential sign that the resurgence in coronavirus cases is slowing the economic recovery.

Friday is also the latest deadline set by the U.S. government for TikTok to sell itself to Oracle and Walmart. The date has already been delayed twice.

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Remembering Tony Hsieh

Tony Hsieh, the 46-year-old entrepreneur and venture capitalist who turned the online shoe retailer Zappos into a billion-dollar business, died on Friday from injuries suffered in a house fire. He stepped down as chief executive of Zappos in August, after more than two decades leading the company with a mission to “create fun and a little weirdness.”

He was obsessed with company culture. Shortly after Amazon bought Zappos for $1.2 billion in 2009, Mr. Hsieh documented the challenges of the growing venture. He lamented that “at company happy hours, you don’t see as many employees from different departments hanging out with one another.” So Zappos began to track the “number and strength” of cross-departmental relationships, aiming to foster more friendships among co-workers. Attention to the little things that help relationships flourish was key to success in business, Mr. Hsieh believed.

He hoped to inspire a management revolution. In 2010, he wrote a best-selling book about the philosophy that drove Zappos, which he dubbed “Delivering Happiness.” He said that prioritizing employee and customer satisfaction was worth the cost. Later, Zappos adopted Holacracy, a radical approach to governance that abolished all titles and hierarchies, intended to free employees to improve processes and meet customers’ needs.

He bet on the physical world, too, trying to revitalize a dilapidated area of downtown Las Vegas. He hoped Zappos’ presence would transform the area and invested $350 million in local real estate and redevelopment. “A lot of companies talk about work-life balance,” he said. “We’re more about work-life integration.”

He realized that not everyone shared his intensity. Zappos became known for an intriguing deal for new hires: it offered some workers up to $1,000 if they wanted to leave. Mr. Hsieh figured that whoever took the offer wasn’t fully committed to the company mission.

His death is under investigation. Recordings of first responders in New London, Conn., where the blaze took place, referred to a man “trapped” or “barricaded” in a burning home, according to The Wall Street Journal.

THE SPEED READ

Deals

• Ant Group’s planned I.P.O., which was delayed by regulators, looks increasingly unlikely to be rescheduled for next year, according to Chinese officials. (Bloomberg)

• Perella Weinberg Partners is near a deal to go public by merging with a blank-check company run by the banking entrepreneur Betsy Cohen. (FT)

• Compass, the retail brokerage backed by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, has hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to advise on an I.P.O. that could take place next year. (Bloomberg)

Politics and policy

• Staff members at the Environmental Protection Agency are rebelling against the Trump administration’s final deregulatory push. (NYT)

• The White House reportedly plans to add the semiconductor maker SMIC and the oil and gas producer CNOOC to a blacklist of Chinese companies with alleged military ties. (Reuters)

• A close look at Newsmax, the media outlet that pushes President Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election — even though its founder doesn’t believe them. (NYT)

Tech

• The price of Bitcoin slumped when the C.E.O. of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, tweeted about rumors of rushed new regulations on cryptocurrencies. (CoinDesk)

• Adding Tesla to the S&P 500 will be a major technical challenge. (WSJ)

• The fight over luxury e-commerce is a familiar tale: Amazon versus everyone else. (NYT)

Best of the rest

• What New York City restaurants really want for the holidays is … outdoor heaters. (NYT)

• The N.F.L.’s travails show why pro sports needs bubbles to operate in a pandemic. (WaPo)

• “The World’s Most Glamorous Quarantine Project” (NYT)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

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