President Biden declared on Friday that he believes that the Equal Rights Amendment has met the requirements of ratification and therefore is now part of the Constitution, but he declined to order the government to finalize the process by officially publishing it.

“In keeping with my oath and duty to Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: The 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.

Under the Constitution, however, the president has no direct role in approving amendments and his statement has no legal force by itself. The archivist of the United States, a Biden appointee, has refused to formally publish the amendment on the grounds that it has not met the requirements to become part of the Constitution.

Aides said that Mr. Biden was not ordering the archivist, Colleen Shogan, to reverse her position and publish the amendment, as advocates have urged him to do. Asked for comment on Friday, the archivist’s office referred back to previous statements refusing to publish the amendment, indicating that she would not change her stance.

Even so, advocates maintained that Mr. Biden’s imprimatur gives the amendment additional credibility for any future court battle over whether it actually has the force of law. In effect, Mr. Biden and his allies are daring opponents to go to court to argue that women do not have equal rights.

Mr. Biden’s decision to weigh in just three days before he leaves office on an issue that has divided the country for generations amounted to a late effort to bring about profound change and shape his own legacy, but without taking actual action.

The Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed more than a century ago and has taken a circuitous route to ratification. It easily passed both houses of Congress with the required two-thirds votes in 1972 and over the next few years was ratified by most states. But it fell short of the three-quarters of states required under the Constitution until January 2020 when Virginia became the 38th state to ratify it.

Opponents have argued that a seven-year deadline imposed by Congress (and later extended by another three years) meant that the ratification was not completed in time, while proponents maintain the deadline was invalid. Moreover, several states that originally ratified have tried to rescind their approval, adding another point of legal uncertainty to the situation.

The amendment itself, originally written by the women’s rights activist Alice Paul in 1923 and later modified, essentially is a single sentence: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” The rest of the amendment simply says that Congress can pass legislation to enforce it and that it would go into effect two years after ratification.

While the text of the amendment seems relatively straightforward on its face at a time when federal law already prohibits sex discrimination, in fact it has long been an explosive issue. Advocates argue that such a bedrock principle should be explicitly built into the Constitution, not just statutory law, while critics contend it would have far-reaching consequences on everything from abortion rights to a military draft for women.

Democrats have been pressing Mr. Biden to order the archivist to publish the amendment. Last month, Dr. Shogan and her deputy, William J. Bosanko, issued a statement saying that the Equal Rights Amendment “cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial and procedural decisions.”

Dr. Shogan and Mr. Bosanko cited various court decisions and memos from the Justice Department in concluding that they “cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment.”

But former Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin and president of the American Constitution Society, a progressive advocacy group, who has been among those pushing for the archivist to publish the amendment, said Mr. Biden’s statement was meaningful even if she does not.

“It’s completely historic to have the president of the United States say it’s already in the Constitution,” Mr. Feingold said in an interview. “I believe and many believe that whether or not the archivist certifies it or not doesn’t matter.”

That represents a turnabout more than two years after saying that it did matter and advancing the strategy of pressing the archivist to publish it as a way to finally declare the amendment part of the Constitution. Now, Mr. Feingold said, the archivist’s role is “merely ministerial” and the president’s opinion is more meaningful.

“For the president to recognize it as a matter of law is something we’ve been working on for years,” he said. “It is a significant moment after 100 years.”

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, got what she wanted from President Biden on Friday on the Equal Rights Amendment.

For months, Ms. Gillibrand had been making a nuisance of herself at the White House, begging senior administration officials for a five-minute meeting with Mr. Biden to persuade him that he could rescue his legacy by adding the century-old amendment, which would explicitly guarantee sex equality, to the Constitution as a way to protect abortion rights in post-Roe America.

Ms. Gillibrand never got her meeting. But in the end, Mr. Biden ran with a version of her theory and executed her strategy.

Mr. Biden declared in one of his final moves as president on Friday that he believes that the Equal Rights Amendment has met the requirements of ratification, and therefore is now part of the Constitution. But he declined to order the government to finalize the process by officially publishing it.

Ms. Gillibrand and others had been pressing him to direct the archivist, who is responsible for the certification and publication of constitutional amendments, to publish the E.R.A. as the 28th Amendment.

But the archivist has made it clear that she believes she could not legally do so, since the deadline initially set for its ratification had passed. (Proponents argued that there was no reference to any deadline in the Constitution and that the issue of the deadline should be ignored.)

In an interview, Ms. Gillibrand said that Mr. Biden essentially went around the archivist.

“He is sidestepping the archivist; she is no longer relevant,” Ms. Gillibrand said. “He has done her job for her. The purpose of the archivist is to give notice to the states.”

She argued that in declaring the Equal Rights Amendment to be the law of the land, Mr. Biden had taken the necessary step to add it to the Constitution.

“He is giving notice to plaintiffs to the change in law, so he has superseded the archivist,” she said.

Ms. Gillibrand said that she was going to immediately begin calling on plaintiffs to file their lawsuits.

“Any person who was incarcerated because they brought their 10-year-old across state lines for abortion services would have a right of action now,” she said. “Every example we’ve seen in red and purple states across the country where women are being denied the right to privacy, travel, now has a clear right of action, and it will ultimately be decided in the courts.”

Ms. Gillibrand for months has been arguing that the White House should not fear the inevitable legal challenges that would come, or the possibility that a conservative-leaning Supreme Court might ultimately strike it down. Her proposed strategy was more political: Dare Republicans to wage a legal battle to take away equal rights for women.

Ms. Gillibrand has been relentless on the issue. She met with Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House chief of staff, and Anita Dunn, a former top adviser to Mr. Biden. She used passing 30-second interactions in photo lines to personally pitch the president herself.

And for the past three weeks, she had been in constant communication with people who have the president’s ear to make the final points of her legal argument, even as she had been locked out of that inner circle.

On Friday morning, Ms. Gillibrand said that she was fine with the fact that she never got her Oval Office meeting.

“In the end,” she said, “I felt heard.”

Kristi Noem’s confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Homeland Security is over. In one of the few notable moments in three hours of cordial questions and answers with senators, she revealed that if she is confirmed she will shut down the use of an app that allows more than a thousand migrants to enter the country a day at ports of entry. The app, CBP One, allows migrants to schedule appointments in advance and has been a key part of the Biden administration’s border strategy. She also said she will work with Trump to bring back a program that forced asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico for the duration of their cases.

The Senate on Friday cleared away the final major hurdle to enactment of legislation that would require the detention and deportation of undocumented migrants accused of minor crimes or assaulting a police officer, after several Democrats joined Republicans to advance it.

In a test vote of 61 to 35 that put the measure on a path to clear Congress within days, 10 Democrats teamed with Republicans to support moving to a final vote in the chamber, enough to surpass the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster. That all but guaranteed that the legislation, which passed the House with bipartisan support last week, would make it to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s desk to be signed after he is sworn in on Monday.

It still must win approval in the Senate in a vote scheduled for late Monday afternoon, just hours after Mr. Trump takes office, and return to the House before heading to the White House.

The Senate action came after senators spent several days debating changes to the bill, a process that exposed deep divisions among Democrats over immigration as some in the party move to the right following their party’s electoral losses in November. The bill is the opening legislative move for Republicans in a broader push to crack down on immigration and significantly step up deportations, a promise that Mr. Trump made a centerpiece of his campaign.

It is named for Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was killed last year by a migrant who crossed into the United States illegally from Venezuela and who had previously been arrested for shoplifting, but had not been detained.

Republicans teed it up as the first of several border bills they hope to revive and enact when they cement their governing trifecta on Monday with Mr. Trump’s inauguration. A similar measure passed the House last year but died when the Democratic-led Senate declined to take it up. The G.O.P. also wants to resurrect measures to increase deportations, hold asylum seekers outside the United States and strip federal funding from cities that restrict their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agencies.

The legislation instructs federal officials to detain unauthorized immigrants arrested for or charged with burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting, expanding the list of charges that would subject migrants to detention and potential deportation. Senators this week added assaulting a police officer to the expanded list.

“As elected representatives, our greatest responsibilities are to listen to the will of the American people, to keep the American people safe and secure,” Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, said shortly before the vote. She repeated a common refrain that the results of the 2024 election amounted to a mandate from voters to crack down on immigration and increase border security, saying, “It is our duty to turn their cries into action.”

Democrats raised grave concerns about the bill, arguing that it would undermine due process rights for migrants who had not yet been convicted of crimes. They also said it would waste limited resources that federal immigration enforcement agencies could use to apprehend people who have committed more serious, violent offenses.

“We have a long road ahead to address my deep concerns with the way this bill threatens due process and the potential for it to be abused,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said on Thursday. She called on her fellow Democrats to demand more changes to the measure, “but more than that, I urge them to demand a serious, bipartisan approach to tackling immigration in an effective, humane way.”

Still, several Democratic senators, including some who are facing re-election in 2026 or represent states that Mr. Trump carried, backed the bill. Among the 10 who voted in favor on Friday were Senators Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Gary Peters of Michigan, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Mark Warner of Virginia, all of whom are to face voters next year. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, whose states Mr. Trump carried in November, also voted to advance the measure, as did Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire.

The bill would also give state attorneys general the right to sue the attorney general of the United States or the homeland security secretary if an immigrant who enters the country illegally goes on to commit a crime that harms the state or any of its residents.

Immigration advocates have denounced the provision as a covert attempt to let conservative governors and state attorneys general dictate federal migrant detention policies. Republicans on Wednesday killed an amendment proposed by Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, that would have stripped the section from the bill.

Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting.

Officials involved in President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration are likely to move his swearing-in on Monday inside the Capitol rotunda because of weather concerns, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

Such a change would mean that far fewer people are able to watch the moment when Mr. Trump officially becomes the 47th president, limiting it to a much smaller group indoors and those watching on television.

The conversation has focused on the extreme cold that is forecast for Monday, when temperatures are projected to hit a low of 11 degrees and a high of only 23 degrees.

The last time a swearing-in moved indoors was for President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration.

It is ultimately up to Mr. Trump to decide whether to move the swearing-in indoors. But one person with knowledge of his thinking said that he is aware of the potentially dangerous conditions for the many thousands of people waiting for hours in bitter cold for the ceremony to start.

On Friday morning, Trump said on his social media website that he had spoken with President Xi Jinping of China. “The call was a very good one for both China and the U.S.A. It is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately. We discussed balancing Trade, Fentanyl, TikTok, and many other subjects. President Xi and I will do everything possible to make the World more peaceful and safe!” he wrote.

Trump revealed the call with China's Xi as the Supreme Court said it would uphold the law banning the Chinese-held app TikTok in the United States unless it finds another owner. The law is set to take effect Sunday.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s advisers may move his swearing-in ceremony inside the Capitol rotunda on Monday as extreme cold is forecast, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

Such a move would break with Trump’s desire for pomp, pageantry and as many eyes watching his second swearing-in as possible.

Noem, in discussing her decision to send the National Guard to the southern border with senators at her confirmation hearing, describes the situation at the border with Mexico as an “invasion” and the area as a “war zone.” She has sent troops from South Dakota to help Texas several times.

Kristi Noem says that the southern border is “not secure,” but that Trump will secure the border in a few days when he takes office.

Kristi Noem, President-elect Trump’s Department of Homeland Security pick, is taking part in her Senate confirmation hearing this morning. Noem’s role will be critical to carrying out Trump’s promises of mass deportations and tightening the country’s southern border. If confirmed, she will oversee the country’s border agents, deportation officers and those who oversee the asylum and refugee system. But the department also includes other critical agencies like the Secret Service, the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Donald Trump has promised to pursue the largest deportation operation in American history as soon as he takes office.

But the Mexican government and other regional allies have been unable to meet with the incoming Trump administration, according to officials in Latin America, leaving them in the dark about the president-elect’s plans to deport millions of illegal immigrants.

The incoming administration rebuffed requests by Mexico for a formal meeting, insisting that detailed discussions will only begin after Mr. Trump is sworn in next Monday, according to a Mexican official and two people familiar with the exchanges who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The Guatemalan and Honduran governments received similar messages, according to officials from those countries.

“This is not the way things usually work,” said Eric L. Olson, a fellow at the Wilson Center’s Latin American program and Mexico Institute. “Usually there are more informal contacts and some level of discussion by now.”

The incoming administration may want to limit confrontation before ramping up pressure by signing a flurry of executive orders on migration, analysts say, leaving governments in the region scrambling to respond. That would likely strengthen Washington’s hand in upcoming negotiations.

Guatemala’s ambassador to the United States was in touch with the Trump transition team, officials said, but members of the incoming administration had not communicated specific plans around a ramp-up in deportations, or how Guatemala should prepare.

Honduran government officials also said they had not yet had significant contact with the incoming Trump administration. Earlier this month, President Xiomara Castro of Honduras threatened to push the U.S. military out of a base it built decades ago in the Central American country if Mr. Trump carries out mass deportations.

Given Mr. Trump’s sharp focus on Latin America, the lack of clarity on his objectives has rattled regional governments.

The incoming administration has said that it wants to restore the “Remain in Mexico” policy implemented during the first Trump term, which forces some migrants to wait in Mexico rather than in the United States while their asylum cases are pending. Mr. Trump has also said he intends to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military in some form to assist in his plans for mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants.

Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has said her administration does not approve of the mass deportation program. “Of course, we do not agree,” she said in a news conference on Wednesday. “But, in the event of such a decision by the U.S. government, we are prepared.”

But whenever asked how the country will respond, her answers have been evasive — although she recently signaled the country’s willingness to accept some non-Mexican deportees.

“We are going to ask the United States that, as far as possible, the migrants who are not from Mexico can be sent to their countries of origin — and if not, we can collaborate through different mechanisms,” she told reporters earlier this month.

Some analysts said Mr. Trump’s team may be limiting their meetings with Latin American governments because they are worried about violating the Logan Act. That law forces incoming administrations to limit the scope of their negotiations with foreign governments until they take office, so as not to undermine sitting American presidents.

But previous incoming administrations have met with foreign governments to cautiously discuss their policy objectives, without violating the act.

Either way, the act has done little to curb Mr. Trump’s appetite to meet with his future counterparts. Since his November election, Mr. Trump has met separately with the leaders of Italy, Canada and Argentina at his hotel in Mar-a-Lago.

Despite the lack of contact, Mr. Trump has made his foreign policy objectives clear through speeches and on social media, giving the Mexican and other regional governments some insight into potential U.S. policies in the pipeline.

“Trump has signaled publicly that migration is a top priority, as are tariffs,” Mr. Olson said.

Shortly after his electoral victory, Mr. Trump threatened to slap 25 percent tariffs on Mexico if it did not do more to curb migration and the flow of drugs.

“But there aren’t clear mechanisms for the Trump administration on how to engage in dialogue and negotiate. That will resolve soon enough” once he assumes office, Mr. Olson added.

The incoming U.S. administration will likely try to get Latin American countries to agree to accept asylum seekers from other nations that are seeking refuge in the U.S., known as “safe third country agreements.” The first Trump administration was able to get Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to sign those pacts, though the policy was only implemented in Guatemala, albeit fleetingly.

But those agreements may be trickier to forge this time. President Bernardo Arévalo of Guatemala told The Associated Press this week, “We are not a safe third country, nobody has proposed it.”

His foreign minister, Carlos Ramírez Martínez, said in an interview that he expected his government would face pressure. “I don’t doubt that that’s coming,” he said.

Officials in El Salvador have said that they will work with the Trump administration to protect the status of Salvadorans in the United States. “We are working so that migration can be an option not an obligation,” Cindy Portal, a senior foreign ministry official, said in a television interview on Wednesday.

Absent clarity from the transition team, some Latin American leaders are instead crafting a united response in anticipation of any executive orders related to immigration or deportations issued once Mr. Trump takes office.

Representatives from several regional governments gathered in Mexico City this week to discuss the “opportunities and challenges of migration in the region and the strengthening of coordination and cooperation,” according to a Guatemalan government statement on the meeting.

The agenda, although heavy on migration, did not mention Mr. Trump.

Jody García contributed reporting from Guatemala City; Joan Suazo from Tegucigalpa, Honduras; and Gabriel Labrador from San Salvador, El Salvador. James Wagner, Paulina Villegas, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Simon Romero contributed from Mexico City; Mary Triny Zea from Panama City; Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia; Hogla Enecia Pérez from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Ed Augustin from Havana, Cuba; and Lucía Cholakian Herrera from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

President Biden announced on Friday that he would commute the sentences of nearly 2,500 inmates serving long prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses, the broadest commutation of individual sentences ever issued by a U.S. president.

The commutations are for offenders who received harsher sentences for drug crimes than they would under current practices, a move aimed at reversing longstanding criminal justice disparities, Mr. Biden said. Those disparities disproportionately affected Black people and fueled mass incarceration, many experts say.

“This action is an important step toward righting historic wrongs, correcting sentencing disparities and providing deserving individuals the opportunity to return to their families and communities after spending far too much time behind bars,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.

The commutations add to Mr. Biden’s sweeping use of his clemency powers as he prepares to leave office. In recent weeks, he has also commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row and set what was a single-day record of 1,500 commutations for those moved to home confinement during the pandemic.

Mr. Biden said he would consider additional pardons, which wipe out convictions, and commutations, which leave the guilty verdict intact but reduce some or all of the punishment, in the coming days. Among others, Mr. Biden has been considering pre-emptive pardons for a number of former elected officials and other people his successor, President-elect Donald J. Trump, may target for political retribution.

Mr. Biden said his latest commutations would help those who received sentences based on now-discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, or faced inflated charges for drug crimes.

Mr. Biden said in his statement that he was following the lead of Congress, which over the past two decades has passed legislation to remedy decades-long disparities spurred by tough-on-crime laws, such as mandatory minimum sentences.

As a senator, Mr. Biden championed one such law, the 1994 crime bill. He has since expressed regret for his support of the legislation, and he committed during the 2020 campaign to addressing the long drug sentences that resulted.

“As Congress recognized through the Fair Sentencing Act and the First Step Act, it is time that we equalize these sentencing disparities,” Mr. Biden said.

The move comes after Mr. Biden faced mounting pressure from advocates and Democratic allies to use his clemency powers in his final days in office to release inmates who are vulnerable or suffered from systemic inequities.

Those calls grew louder last month after Mr. Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son Hunter — after repeatedly insisting he would not do so — erasing years of legal troubles, including a federal conviction for illegally buying a gun and a guilty plea to tax evasion charges.

In recent months, Mr. Biden’s staff members have fielded requests from Democrats and criminal justice advocates who have called on him to specifically focus on those who have been imprisoned for decades for drug laws that have changed over time. He faced the most pressure to act to help those imprisoned for crimes associated with crack cocaine who would most likely have been released if it was powder cocaine.

In April, he commuted the sentences of five people convicted of drug-related crimes. That was in addition to commuting the sentences of nearly a dozen such prisoners in December 2023. Many of them were convicted of crimes involving powder cocaine.

Some of Mr. Biden’s closest allies, such as Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, have made the case to the White House that crack cocaine was more widespread among the Black community, while powder cocaine tended to be used by white people.

“I told them that these are some of the inequities that Black people have been caught up with,” Mr. Clyburn said in an interview last month.

Mr. Biden had already issued blanket pardons, including for thousands of people convicted of federal possession of marijuana and veterans convicted of engaging in gay sex. None of those people were in prison at the time.

Some Democrats lobbying the White House said that using clemency to address the sentencing disparities could be a cornerstone of the president’s criminal justice record.

“It’s not a matter of just what is the right thing,” Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts said in an interview last month. “It is also a matter of legacy.”

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to run the Homeland Security Department, will face questions from senators on Friday about an agency that will be critical to fulfilling the new administration’s promises to quickly crack down on immigration.

While Ms. Noem, South Dakota’s governor since 2019, has largely avoided the scrutiny surrounding some of Mr. Trump’s other nominees, the agency she seeks to oversee runs the nation’s immigration system, including law enforcement at the southern border. The department also includes other critical agencies like the Secret Service, the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

She will face lawmakers on the Senate Homeland Security Committee during a time of shifting perceptions of immigration. Mr. Trump’s vows to aggressively police the border and carry out mass deportations helped propel him to victory in November, and some Democrats have signaled support of increased enforcement.

Ms. Noem, 53, favors the immigration restrictions that Mr. Trump campaigned on. She regularly criticized the Biden administration’s policies and as governor even sent the state’s National Guard to the southern border.

“As you know, I’ve taken a stand against this invasion,” she said in a speech last week. “We’ve deployed our South Dakota National Guard to our southern border eight times. That includes five state deployments to support Texas’ work to stop the flow of illegal aliens.”

Mr. Trump has said Ms. Noem is “very strong on border security,” but history suggests it may be challenging to keep him satisfied: During his first term, Mr. Trump had six leaders of the department.

The president-elect has also said that Ms. Noem will work closely with Tom Homan, whom he has announced as the White House’s “border czar” and given a broad portfolio of responsibilities.

The National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol agents, has come out in support of Ms. Noem’s nomination.

“We are confident that as secretary, Governor Noem will continue to ensure Border Patrol agents have the resources and manpower that we need to secure our border,” the union wrote in a letter to senators late last year. “We urge you to quickly begin consideration of this critical nomination and confirm Governor Noem as secretary once President Trump is sworn in.”

The American Civil Liberties Union called on senators to probe Ms. Noem’s views on critical issues.

“Given President-elect Trump’s promises, the stakes are even higher,” Sarah Mehta, the group’s senior policy counsel, said in a statement. “The Senate must take seriously its ‘advice and consent’ role and get Kristi Noem on the record on important issues that impact all our communities, including surveillance, religious and racial profiling, and use of force against protesters.”

In order to conceivably carry out Mr. Trump’s promised largest deportation effort in U.S. history, the department will need many things, including more resources, expanded cooperation across the country from local jails and increased deportations to countries that generally limit the return of their nationals.

Before she was elected governor, Ms. Noem served as a congresswoman from 2011 to 2019.

Seven years ago, when Republicans passed the most significant overhaul of the tax code in a generation, they were sure the law would supercharge investment, raise wages and shift the American economy into a higher gear.

So did it?

The answer, at least for now, is largely lost to history.

A pandemic and a surge in inflation convulsed the global economy not long after the law passed in 2017, scrambling the data that analysts would have typically relied on to draw conclusions about whether the tax cuts helped the economy grow the way Republicans had promised.

As a result, policymakers in Washington are now relying on only a partial understanding of the law’s past as they weigh committing roughly $5 trillion toward continuing it.

“Basically, from 2020 the data is kind of useless,” said Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who counts Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, among his former students.

Economists have focused on just two years before the coronavirus pandemic, 2018 and 2019, to measure the law’s consequences for the most important economy in the world. But that’s a limited window for trying to discern whether the tax cuts prompted a cycle of investment and growth that can take years to play out.

“In terms of looking at longer-run effects, pretty much just forget about it,” Mr. Auerbach said. “There’s just no way to control for the effects of Covid.”

Not that everything about the 2017 tax law is a mystery. The legislation slashed marginal tax rates for almost every individual income bracket, created a larger standard deduction and expanded the child tax credit. For businesses, the law cut the corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, temporarily incentivized new capital investments, overhauled the taxation of earnings overseas and offered a new deduction to owners of many typically smaller companies.

To Republicans, who passed the law over unified Democratic opposition in the first year of Mr. Trump’s first term, these changes amounted to an unqualified economic success. They credit the tax cuts with strong growth and wage increases in the years before the pandemic, warning that letting many of the 2017 cuts expire, currently scheduled to happen at the end of the year, would create an economic drag.

“We saw the power of these tax cuts in ’18, ’19 and going into January of ’20 before they were interrupted by Covid, and the great success that we had,” Scott Bessent, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Treasury Department, said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday. “If we do not renew and extend, then we will be facing an economic calamity.”

Economists are more circumspect. Trying to pinpoint the role that any single factor plays in a sprawling economy shaped by changing interest rates, oil prices and dozens of other variables is an inherently difficult task. Only with carefully constructed models do economists offer some findings about how a tax cut affects the economy.

They generally view tax cuts for individuals as having little effect on the economy overall, despite their popularity. Economic research suggests that marginally lower tax rates do not motivate people to work more, which could bolster growth, and the money that Americans save from lower taxes does not affect the economy in a lasting way, either. So some of the most expensive pieces of the 2017 law — the lower individual rates and larger standard deduction — are most likely the least important to the economy.

“If you look at the bang for the buck of different kinds of tax reforms, you’ll find broad individual tax cuts aren’t as growth enhancing as something targeted at capital investment,” said Erica York, the vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, a think tank that generally favors lower taxes.

That leaves much of the scholarly focus on the corporate tax cuts included in the 2017 law. Textbook economic theory states that lower taxes cause companies to invest more in their businesses, which in turn helps make workers more productive, lifting wages and the prospects of the entire economy.

In a paper last year, a team of researchers from Harvard, Princeton and the University of Chicago reviewed several different ways of measuring the corporate response to the tax cuts. Despite some of the scattered data, the academics concluded that the lower corporate tax cuts had in fact helped stimulate more corporate investment.

The team then used what Eric Zwick, an economist at the University of Chicago and one of the paper’s authors, called “back of the envelope” modeling to extrapolate the effect of higher corporate investment to the performance of the entire economy. They estimated that the law would help the economy become 1 percent larger over 10 years, growth that in turn pointed toward roughly $750 more in wages for each American worker. Such an increase would still be far below the $4,000 per employee that Mr. Trump’s White House had originally promised the corporate tax cuts would generate.

Mr. Zwick said he felt confident about the general conclusions of his research, even if he acknowledged the added challenge of understanding long-term economic effects from only two years of Covid-free data.

“It’s not ideal,” he said. “Having at least five years of data would have been really helpful for thinking through dynamic effects.”

The research from Mr. Zwick and his colleagues threw cold water on the Republicans’ insistence that the tax cuts paid for themselves. Even with the added growth that Mr. Zwick and his co-authors found, they maintained that the lower corporate taxes had cost the U.S. government billions. Estimates at the time of the 2017 law’s passage found that it would add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.

Republicans have long argued that lower tax rates will stoke so much economic activity that the government will collect just as much revenue as it did before it cut taxes. More recently, they have cited higher-than-forecast tax revenue in the years since the pandemic as evidence of the tax cuts’ success.

Seemingly in response, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office explained in a recent publication that much of the higher tax revenue was a result of higher inflation’s pushing up prices and earnings.

Other analysts have found that the benefits of the tax cuts have gone largely to the rich. One study by economists at the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and the Federal Reserve looked at the near-term corporate response to the tax cuts, finding that employees saw higher earnings as a result. But those increases went entirely to the people who were already the top earners at their companies, with the bottom 90 percent of employees seeing no gains, the researchers found.

The finding comes on top of the fact that the individual income tax cuts, while affecting many Americans, skewed toward most benefiting the rich, who pay the bulk of the nation’s income taxes.

“There are two things we know it did: It increased the deficit, and it redistributed resources toward the wealthy,” said Bill Gale, a co-director at the Tax Policy Center, a think tank, of the 2017 tax law. “The things that are harder to pin down are whether and how much it raised investment and whether and how much it affected wages.”

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House who retired from her leadership position two years ago, will skip President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, a spokesman said, extending a long-running feud between Mr. Trump and one of his chief antagonists from his first term.

The spokesman did not specify why Ms. Pelosi would not attend, but the former speaker has made no secret of her disdain for Mr. Trump, calling him unfit for office and a “stain on our country.” She led a chamber that impeached him twice, and she memorably ripped up a copy of one of his State of the Union addresses while standing behind him on national television.

Ms. Pelosi, 84, is still recovering from a hip replacement after falling while on an official trip to Luxembourg, but she has been attending votes in the House and the injury has not kept her away from other parts of her job.

As the leader of the Democratic minority at the time, she attended Mr. Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, wearing a button protesting Mr. Trump’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But as a retired leader, she has more flexibility to skip Washington ceremonies and make a statement with her absence. She also skipped an address by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to a joint session of Congress last year.

Ms. Pelosi frequently sparred verbally with Mr. Trump from the minority, and from nearly the moment Democrats took back the House majority in 2019, Ms. Pelosi and the president clashed in weighty political struggles over government funding and his first impeachment. Their in-person meetings also featured fireworks, including when Mr. Trump refused to shake hands with Ms. Pelosi at his 2020 State of the Union address and then she tore up his speech.

The animosity between the two leaders reached a fever pitch on Jan. 6, 2021, as a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, and a rioter vandalized Ms. Pelosi’s office and posed for a photo with a boot on her desk. Days later, Ms. Pelosi moved to impeach Mr. Trump a second time. After an intruder invaded Ms. Pelosi’s San Francisco home and attacked her husband, Paul, Mr. Trump amplified a baseless conspiracy theory that the attack was not genuine.

“What was sad about it, too, for my children, my grandchildren, my husband and for me was that President Trump thought it was funny,” Ms. Pelosi said in an interview with The New York Times in November. “He made a joke of it.”

Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, his re-election chances in doubt and a federal indictment looming over him, will meet with President-elect Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday afternoon, just days before the inauguration.

The mayor, a Democrat, flew to Florida on Thursday with no advance announcement. His aides said only that the two men would discuss “New Yorkers’ priorities” when they meet on Friday at around 1 p.m.

Mr. Adams joined a diverse roster of leaders from around the world who’ve made the trip to Mar-a-Lago since the election, and he is not the first Democrat. John Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, met with Mr. Trump last week. Other recent visitors have included Viktor Orban, the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary, and Justin Trudeau, the liberal prime minister of Canada, who is leaving office soon.

The mayor requested the meeting, according to two people with knowledge of the trip. The city is funding the trip because it has a “city purpose,” the mayor’s spokeswoman said.

Mr. Trump, who was convicted of 34 felonies in New York City in May, and Mr. Adams have grown publicly closer since Mr. Adams’s indictment in September on five federal corruption charges. It is part of an investigation that the mayor argues is political retribution for his criticism of President Biden’s immigration policies.

Mr. Trump has publicly commiserated with Mr. Adams and seconded his depiction of a Justice Department run amok. Mr. Adams has expressed openness to the notion of receiving a presidential pardon.

While a pardon for Mr. Adams might clear up some legal problems for the mayor, it could also prove politically toxic for an incumbent already facing an uphill path to re-election in a highly competitive June primary in a city dominated by Democrats.

The mayor has drawn criticism from members of his party for appearing to cozy up to Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Adams’s spokesman, Fabien Levy, said the mayor had only the city’s interests in mind. “Mayor Adams has made quite clear his willingness to work with President-elect Trump and his incoming administration on behalf of New Yorkers — and that partnership with the federal government is critical to New York City’s success,” Mr. Levy said.

“The mayor looks forward to having a productive conversation with the incoming president on how we can move our city and country forward,” he added.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some of Mr. Adams’s opponents in the upcoming Democratic primary attacked him Thursday night for the Mar-a-Lago trip.

“Eric Adams should state immediately that he will not seek or accept a pardon from Donald Trump,” Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, said. “New Yorkers deserve to know that their mayor is putting their interests ahead of his own.”

State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, also a candidate in the Democratic primary, called the trip “a pathetic and embarrassing gambit by a disgraced mayor to keep himself out of federal prison, nothing more.”

He added, “He’s willing to let our neighbors be deported and our city’s budget be slashed, if it helps him get a pardon from our president.”

“I imagine it’s easier to ask for a pardon in person,” said State Senator Jessica Ramos, who is also running for mayor. She said the mayor’s failure to disclose the trip on his schedule until Thursday night was inappropriate. “It makes New Yorkers feel like he is hiding. ”

Mr. Trump has a famously fraught relationship with New York City. Though he grew up in Queens and later was celebrated for real estate deals and tabloid sizzle, the city resoundingly rejected his first bid for the presidency, and New Yorkers responded to his election in 2016 by stripping his name from several high-rise buildings. Mr. Trump, in turn, took every opportunity to disparage New York.

In 2019, he complained of his treatment at the hands of New York’s leaders and changed his primary residence from Manhattan to Palm Beach, Fla.

In the 2024, New York City voters also rejected Mr. Trump’s presidential bid, albeit by smaller margins. And New York City’s mayor has adopted a far more conciliatory tone.

For months, Mr. Adams has adopted a warm posture toward the incoming president.

In the run-up to the November election, his apparent reluctance to criticize Mr. Trump and to endorse Kamala Harris for president raised questions about whom he intended to vote for. On Election Day, he told reporters that he did in fact plan to vote for Ms. Harris.

Since Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Adams, who was for a period of time in the 1990s a registered Republican, has repeatedly said he wanted to work with the president-elect, not war with him.

During an interview in December, he did not immediately rule out running for re-election as a Republican, only to later clarify that he did in fact intend to run as a Democrat again.

The same month, he met with Mr. Trump’s incoming “border czar,” Thomas D. Homan, and said they shared “the same desire” to go after undocumented immigrants who had committed crimes in the city. Mr. Homan, who played a central role in Mr. Trump’s first-term family separation policies, proceeded to go on the TV show “Dr. Phil” and praise the mayor.

Around the same time, two of Mr. Adams’s advisers were quietly trying to secure a ticket for him to attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration in Washington on Monday.

At a charity event in September, Mr. Trump said he felt a kinship with Mr. Adams.

“We were persecuted, Eric,” Mr. Trump said at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. “I was persecuted, and so are you, Eric.”

At a news conference three months later, Mr. Trump said he would consider a pardon for Mr. Adams.

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, in farewell remarks on Thursday, denied accusations leveled against his tenure, including by his likely successor, that the Justice Department’s work had become infected by politics.

“Over the years, some have criticized the department, saying that it has allowed politics to influence its decision-making,” Mr. Garland said, addressing employees at Justice Department headquarters. “But the story that has been told by some outside of this building about what has happened inside of it is wrong. You have worked to pursue justice — not politics. That is the truth.”

As attorney general under President Biden, Mr. Garland oversaw two indictments of a former president that never made it to trial. His final address sought to rebut the many criticisms deployed by presidents, members of Congress and media pundits for either being too cautious or too aggressive on politically sensitive cases, particularly those involving Donald J. Trump.

Just a day earlier, that criticism was echoed by the person likely to succeed Mr. Garland, Pam Bondi.

“Politics has to be taken out of this system,” Ms. Bondi declared at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This department has been weaponized for years and years and years, and it has to stop.”

In his remarks, Mr. Garland choked up repeatedly, particularly when talking about the dedication of the career staff of the department, as well as the pain of the families of fallen law enforcement officers and mass shooting victims.

The farewell ceremony on Thursday is not the formal end of Mr. Garland’s tenure — he will remain as the nation’s top law enforcement official until the changeover of administrations on Monday.

A former appeals court judge and Justice Department staff member, Mr. Garland said that attorneys general were short-time custodians and that the “heart and soul” of the department lay with its career staff.

“I know that a lot is being asked of you right now,” he said. “All I ask is that you remember who you are, and why you came to work here in the first place.”

Mr. Garland’s ceremony is the largest of a series of send-offs at the department for senior Biden administration officials. Somewhat unusually in the department’s recent history, many of the attorney general’s senior-most advisers stayed for the entire four-year term, leading now to what Mr. Garland’s top deputy, Lisa Monaco, jokingly referred to as “farewell-palooza.”

“If history is a guide,” Ms. Monaco said, “this department will face tests in the future.”