Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to lead the nation’s health agencies, formally asked the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the authorization of all Covid vaccines during a deadly phase of the pandemic when thousands of Americans were still dying every week.

Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the F.D.A. in May 2021 demanding that officials rescind authorization for the shots and refrain from approving any Covid vaccine in the future.

Just six months earlier, Mr. Trump had declared the Covid vaccines a miracle. At the time Mr. Kennedy filed the petition, half of American adults were receiving their shots. Schools were reopening and churches were filling.

Estimates had begun to show that the rapid rollout of Covid vaccines had already saved about 140,000 lives in the United States.

The petition was filed on behalf of the nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy founded and led, Children’s Health Defense. It claimed that the risks of the vaccines outweighed the benefits and that the vaccines weren’t necessary because good treatments were available, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which had already been deemedineffective against the virus.

The petition received little notice when it was filed. Mr. Kennedy was then on the fringes of the public health establishment, and the agency denied it within months. Public health experts told about the filing said it was shocking.

John Moore, a professor of immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, called Mr. Kennedy’s request to the F.D.A. “an appalling error of judgment.” Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, likened having Mr. Kennedy lead the federal health agencies to “putting a flat earther in charge of NASA.”

Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, described Mr. Kennedy’s effort to halt the use of Covid vaccines as a “massive error.”

Mr. Kennedy’s transition spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment, but has said recently that he does not want to take vaccines away.

“I wouldn’t have directly blocked it,” he said. “I would have made sure that we had the best science, and there was no effort to do that at that time.”

Mr. Kennedy’s early opposition to Covid vaccines has alarmed public health experts, many of whom contend that it should disqualify him from overseeing health agencies with the power to authorize, monitor and allocate funding for millions of vaccines each year.

They are also concerned about how he might handle a possible bird flu pandemic, which could necessitate a rapid deployment of vaccines.

As Mr. Kennedy prepares for his confirmation hearings before two Senate committees, he and his allies have insisted that he is not anti-vaccine.

In fact, in mid-2023, he told a House panel that he had taken all recommended vaccines — except for the Covid immunization.

At his confirmation hearings, he’ll most likely face scrutiny of his broader statements on vaccines, including that the polio vaccine cost more lives than it saved.

Mr. Trump has stepped forward in recent weeks to defend Mr. Kennedy after The New York Times reported that one of Mr. Kennedy’s lawyers had previously petitioned the F.D.A. to revoke approval or pause distribution of several polio vaccines over safety concerns.

“I think he’s going to be much less radical than you would think,” Mr. Trump said last month.

After the Times report, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy expressed their support for the polio vaccine.

If confirmed by the Senate as secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, Mr. Kennedy would assume oversight of $8 billion in funding for the Vaccines for Children program and would have the authority to appoint new members to a panel that makes influential vaccine recommendations to states.

Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, said it would be reasonable to debate whether Covid vaccines should have been subject to additional study.

But she profoundly disagreed with Mr. Kennedy’s views, saying that “the idea that in early 2021 that you could be saying that people over the age of 65 don’t need Covid vaccines — that’s just nuts.”

Vaccines have rare side effects, and there have been cases of injury from the Covid shots. Government officials weigh the harms against the potential to save lives. An estimate released in early 2024 found that the Covid vaccines and mitigation measures saved about 800,000 lives in the United States.

Another study found that in late 2021 and 2022, Covid death rates among unvaccinated people were 14 times the rates of those who had received a Covid booster shot. Researchers also estimated that from May 2021 through September 2022, more than 230,000 deaths could have been prevented among people who declined initial Covid inoculations.

From the start of the Covid vaccine campaign, Mr. Kennedy’s view that the Covid vaccines were dangerous put him at odds with Mr. Trump, whose Operation Warp Speed to develop the vaccines was one of his policy triumphs. And Mr. Kennedy went on a concerted campaign against the vaccine.

Mr. Kennedy told Louisiana lawmakers in late 2021 that the Covid vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”

He has remained a plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Biden and others, contesting efforts by government officials to limit his ability to suggest on social media that Covid vaccines were not safe.

In January 2021, Mr. Kennedy suggested on Facebook that the death of the baseball legend Hank Aaron, 86, was related to a Covid vaccine he had received 17 days earlier. It was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths” following Covid vaccines, he claimed. A doctor who was vaccinated alongside Mr. Aaron and the county medical examiner dismissed the claim.

In May, when Mr. Kennedy petitioned the F.D.A. to “immediately remove Covid vaccines from the market,” he was joined by Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory board and a physician in Maine.

Her medical license was initially suspended on an emergency basis in early 2022 for prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to patients with severe cases of Covid, including one who was intubated, Maine medical board records show.

She later sued the board, claiming that it retaliated against her for exercising her right to free speech. The case is pending.

In 2022, Mr. Kennedy and others filed a lawsuit against the F.D.A. on behalf of Children’s Health Defense and parents who said they were concerned that their children would be given Covid vaccines without their knowledge or consent. The amended lawsuit, filed in July 2022, sought a court order requesting that the agency reconsider granting authorization for Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines for children.

A Texas appeals court dismissed the case in early 2024, concurring with a lower court that the plaintiffs did not face a “concrete or imminent” risk of harm. In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.

Mr. Kennedy also sent letters to the F.D.A. threatening legal action if vaccine authorizations for children were granted.

Covid vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna for infants and children 6 months to 11 years old remain in use under emergency authorization, according to the F.D.A. Spokesmen for Pfizer and for Moderna said the companies are pursuing full approval for all ages.

Mr. Kennedy claimed in the censorship case that top Biden administration officials had coerced social media platforms to silence him, mostly during the summer of 2021. At the time, vaccine rates were stalling. People who were not vaccinated began to die at higher rates. Some who died were young; their loved ones said they were confused by conflicting messages on social media — or regretted that they had not gotten the vaccine.

Records in the lawsuit outline a briefing that summer with Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary at the time, and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, both of whom criticized social media companies for allowing the spread of misinformation that was influencing people against vaccination.

“And we can’t wait longer for them to take aggressive action because it’s costing people their lives,” Dr. Murthy said on July 15, 2021.

Mr. Biden expressed outrage the following day, telling reporters that social media companies that hosted vaccine misinformation were “killing people.”

In legal filings, Mr. Kennedy said that he had been named one of the “Disinformation Dozen” by a prominent advocacy group — and that he was one of the people the White House was targeting. Exhibits in the lawsuit show that White House officials leaned on social media companies to take down misinformation.

Within a month, a senior Facebook executive reported to Dr. Murthy that it had removed a number of pages or groups, including Mr. Kennedy’s, court records show.

The Supreme Court dismissed an associated case last summer, and an appeals court dismissed Mr. Kennedy’s case late last year. Lawyers representing Mr. Kennedy and others are still working on obtaining depositions of about 30 people, mostly Biden administration officials.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Dylan Freedman contributed reporting.

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President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday that his inauguration would be moved inside the Capitol Rotunda because of a frigid weather forecast, the first time in 40 years that a presidential swearing-in will be held indoors.

The change for Monday’s inauguration means that far fewer people will be able to watch in person as Mr. Trump officially becomes the 47th president. It also avoids the potential for smaller crowds because of the weather. Mr. Trump was furious about reports that he had smaller crowds in 2017 than President Obama had at his 2009 inauguration.

“The weather forecast for Washington, D.C., with the windchill factor, could take temperatures into severe record lows,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media website, Truth Social.

“I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way,” he added. “It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of Law Enforcement, First Responders, Police K9s and even horses, and hundreds of thousands of supporters that will be outside for many hours on the 20th (In any event, if you decide to come, dress warmly!).”

Trump officials had been discussing what to do about the weather well before Mr. Trump decided to have the inauguration moved indoors.

Temperatures in Washington on Monday are projected to drop to a low of 11 degrees, with a high of 23 degrees. The last time a swearing-in moved indoors was in 1985 for President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration, similarly because of cold weather.

Mr. Trump said many of the people who have been streaming into Washington to watch the festivities can gather to watch inaugural events at the 20,000-seat Capital One Arena, which is several blocks from the National Mall, and that he would join them there afterward.

That is likely a bitter pill to swallow for some major donors, who paid top dollar to come to the swearing-in and witness it in person. Trump officials received calls from donors on Friday asking for help getting access. The Rotunda only seats about 600 people, according to a spokesperson for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.

The inaugural parade is also expected to be incorporated into the viewing party at the arena, according to Mr. Trump’s social media post. It is unclear whether additional ways to watch — such as Jumbotrons outside the arena — will be available.

While Mr. Trump’s inaugural events were set to be the highlight of the weekend, many donors and corporate executives have made plans to fly into the capital for the preceding days. None of the other events are likely to be affected.

Some major donors, who tend to be older, were not even planning to watch the ceremony outdoors before Mr. Trump’s Friday decision. One donor group, the Rockbridge Network, planned to host what was described as an indoor viewing party for the ceremony and parade at The Ned, a new members club in Washington.

If any donors are dissuaded from coming to Washington because of the new location, there are plenty of people willing to take their seats. Throughout January, some donors were so desperate that they made donations to the presidential inaugural committee without a guarantee that they would get tickets at all, and sometimes were placed on wait-lists.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is planning to attend President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration on Monday, according to two people with knowledge of the planning.

Mr. Pence was invited by the congressional committee overseeing the event, as is the custom for all former presidents and vice presidents, according to one of the people with knowledge of the planning.

Mr. Trump selected Senator JD Vance of Ohio, rather than Mr. Pence, as his running mate in July 2024.

It is unclear what impact, if any, the request by Mr. Trump to move his second swearing-in ceremony into the Capitol Rotunda will have on the seating arrangements for former presidents and vice presidents. Unlike the outdoor dais and the seating setup, the Capitol Rotunda only seats about 600 people.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Pence declined to discuss his plans. A spokeswoman working with the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which oversees the planning for the events, would not discuss Mr. Pence.

The former vice president was forced to escape a mob of pro-Trump supporters who descended on the Capitol during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, as he was presiding over the certification of President Biden’s Electoral College win. Some of them chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.”

Mr. Trump had pressed Mr. Pence to influence the outcome; Mr. Pence repeatedly said he’d researched it and didn’t have the power to do so. Their relationship was irreparably broken, and Mr. Pence ran against Mr. Trump for a brief time in the 2024 Republican primaries.

The two men saw each other recently at the funeral services for former President Jimmy Carter at the Washington National Cathedral, and exchanged a handshake.

Mayor Eric Adams of New York CIty met with President-elect Trump at his golf club near Mar-a-Lago on Friday. As he arrived at Palm Beach International Airport to return home, Adams said their lunch went well but declined to discuss any details of their conversation. He did confirm that they dined near the actor Sylvester Stallone and that he told him that he loved the "Rocky" movies.

When President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office on Monday, the U.S. Border Patrol is poised to play a central role in his promised immigration crackdown. On Thursday, Californians got a preview of the tensions likely to play out as undocumented migrants get rounded up in places that rely on their labor.

On one side, a Border Patrol chief posted a video on social media showcasing sweeps last week in California’s Central Valley. Named Operation Return to Sender, the effort involved dozens of arrests. “They think I’m hiding in the shadows, but I am the shadows,” a voice whispered during the video, echoing a popular Batman movie.

On the other side, United Farm Workers officials held a news briefing, describing the fears the operation had caused in immigrant communities. They suggested the arrests signaled that “rogue” law enforcement agents, inspired by Mr. Trump’s plans, could take matters into their own hands.

“This is part of a new political climate of people in some of these agencies feeling emboldened,” said Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesman for the organization, a labor union.

The Biden administration and the Trump transition team did not reply to messages seeking comment. U.S. Customs and Border Protection would not answer questions about the effort, saying broadly that agents conducted “targeted enforcement arrests of individuals involved in smuggling throughout our areas of operation as part of our efforts to dismantle transnational criminal organizations.”

President Biden on Friday declared that he believes that the Equal Rights Amendment has met the requirements of ratification and is now part of the Constitution, moving just days before leaving office to try to enshrine sex equality as a basic principle.

“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.

But it was not immediately clear what the impact of his declaration would be. Under the Constitution, the president has no direct role in approving amendments, and his statement had no legal force by itself.

The archivist of the United States, a Biden appointee, has said she would not publish the amendment, on the grounds that it had not met the requirements to become part of the Constitution. And Mr. Biden declined to order her to finalize the process with the amendment’s publication.

Here’s what his declaration could mean.

The status of the Equal Rights Amendment was already a matter of dispute. Under the Constitution, adding an amendment requires approval by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, a step that occurred more than 50 years ago. It also takes ratification by three-quarters of the states, which did not happen until 2020, when Virginia became the 38th state to do so.

But there was a wrinkle. When Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, it laid out a seven-year deadline for ratification by the states, which was subsequently extended to 10 years. But by 1982, only 35 states had ratified it.

Democrats have argued that because the Constitution says nothing about a time frame for ratification, the deadline set by Congress can simply be ignored. But critics, including many Republicans, say that the E.R.A. is essentially dead because it was not ratified in time, particularly because some states have since rescinded their approval.

In the past, federal courts have rejected claims that the E.R.A. was ratified.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, led an effort by lawmakers to persuade Mr. Biden that the E.R.A. is already the law of the land and that all he needs to do was direct the archivist, who is responsible for the certification and publication of constitutional amendments, to publish it as the 28th Amendment.

On Friday, Mr. Biden effectively embraced that argument, asserting that the E.R.A. had passed all the hurdles necessary to make it part of the Constitution.

But it was preemptively rejected by the archivist.

The archivist, Colleen Shogan, and her deputy, William J. Bosanko, issued a statement last month saying that the Equal Rights Amendment “cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial and procedural decisions.”

So it remains to be seen whether others beside Mr. Biden and his allies will recognize the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment.

Proponents say that there is precedent for a president simply declaring a constitutional amendment into existence. They point to the example of Jan. 8, 1798, when President John Adams stated that the 11th Amendment had been adopted by three-fourths of the states and that it should now be deemed to be a part of the Constitution.

They are encouraging women to test the matter by starting to bring lawsuits citing the Equal Rights Amendment, with the goal of ultimately forcing the Supreme Court to decide those cases, and in the process establish whether the amendment itself has any force.

“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,” Ms. Gillibrand 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.”

Proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment have long made it clear that their strategy is primarily a political, not a legal one. Their goal is to dare Republicans to challenge the legitimacy of sex equality, and of moving to nullify something as simple as equal rights for women.

“This is a political rather than a legal struggle,” Laurence Tribe, the constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, has said. “It would succeed only in a different environment than we have.”

Mr. Tribe argued that the import of Mr. Biden’s move was in the signal it would send to the country.

“The real question is what political message is being sent,” he said. “In a political environment like this, you throw at the wall whatever you can.”

During the first Trump administration, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that Virginia’s late approval of the Equal Rights Amendment did not count, because it was after the congressional deadline was valid and enforceable. In 2022, Mr. Biden’s Justice Department reaffirmed that ruling, and said the deadline established by Congress for the E.R.A. was valid.

Federal courts have upheld the dismissal of lawsuits that claim the amendment has been ratified and is already part of the Constitution.

And anti-abortion groups, aware of the power it would have if it were considered the law, are primed and ready to fight it at every level.

“The E.R.A. could anchor a supposed right to abortion in the Constitution itself,” Emma Waters, a research associate at the conservative Heritage Foundation, wrote in 2023. She added: “To protect the lives of women and their unborn children, lawmakers must oppose the national Equal Rights Amendment.”

A federal judge in Florida put off making a ruling on Friday about whether the Justice Department can give members of Congress a report by the special counsel, Jack Smith, detailing his findings in the criminal case accusing President-elect Donald J. Trump of mishandling classified documents.

The decision by the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, to hold off issuing a ruling raised the possibility that any efforts to share that part of Mr. Smith’s report outside of the Justice Department would be postponed until after Mr. Trump re-enters the White House on Monday. At that point, he and his officials would have the power to keep the report from seeing the light of day.

Judge Cannon’s decision not to issue an immediate ruling came at the conclusion of a hearing in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., where prosecutors and defense lawyers argued about the Justice Department’s plan to release the volume not to the public, but to the four leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has said that the classified documents section of the two-volume report should not be made public at the moment because an appeal in that proceeding remains active as to Mr. Trump’s two co-defendants in the case and that any release of new information could be prejudicial to them.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers and lawyers for the co-defendants took issue with Mr. Garland’s plan, arguing that giving the volume to Congress would only encourage lawmakers to leak it or talk about it in open session. The lawyers were concerned about public discussion of the report because they claim the volume contains “false and derogatory” information that Mr. Trump's congressional adversaries could use to undermine his transition “and his ability to govern our nation moving forward.”

Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, asked the government at one point why there was “such urgency to release” the report to Congress now, adding, “I am still not hearing a satisfactory answer to that question.”

Elizabeth Shapiro, one of the prosecutors, said that Mr. Garland’s remaining time in office was limited and that he wanted to see the release of the report “satisfied during his tenure.”

It remains unclear what specific revelations the volume contains because the document itself has never been made public and some of the discussions about it in court on Friday were conducted under seal. Still, court papers have left hints about what sorts of disclosures could in theory be in the report.

More than a year ago — well before Judge Cannon dismissed the classified documents case in its entirety — Mr. Smith said in a filing that he planned to prove at trial why Mr. Trump had removed a trove of highly sensitive state secrets from the White House in 2021 and what he intended by retaining them. Because the case never went in front of a jury, prosecutors have never publicly addressed head-on the question of Mr. Trump’s motives — although they could do so in Mr. Smith’s report.

Moreover, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have complained, in a vague but vocal way, that the report implicates some “anticipated” members of his incoming administration. That could be a reference to witnesses like Kash Patel, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I., who was forced to testify to a grand jury in the documents case after he sought to avoid appearing by asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The dispute about the classified documents report is one of the final fights still remaining from the two criminal cases that Mr. Smith, who stepped down as special counsel last week, filed against Mr. Trump in 2023. Aside from the classified documents indictment that Judge Cannon oversaw in Florida, the special counsel also filed a separate indictment in Washington, charging Mr. Trump with plotting to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

But after Mr. Trump won the 2024 election, Mr. Smith was forced to drop all of the charges against him under a binding Justice Department policy that prohibits pursuing criminal prosecutions against a sitting president. Under a different Justice Department regulation, Mr. Smith was also required, at the completion of his work, to submit a final report about the two cases to Mr. Garland.

Last week, Mr. Garland released the volume of the report that Mr. Smith wrote about the election interference case in Washington. That volume said, among other things, that Mr. Smith was confident Mr. Trump would have been found guilty of the charges if the case had gone to trial.

Judge Cannon could profoundly affect the future of the classified documents volume simply by avoiding any decision until after Inauguration Day. At that point, Mr. Trump would have control of the Justice Department and could pardon his two co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, or simply order the case against them to be dropped.

He could also have officials in his Justice Department sit on the report and never release it to anyone.

If Judge Cannon does allow decisions about the sole remaining — and perhaps most damaging — part of Mr. Smith’s report to drift into next week, it would follow a pattern she took throughout the classified documents case.

Over and over, Judge Cannon granted a serious hearing to far-fetched issues that Mr. Trump’s lawyers raised in his defense. Her willingness to consider such arguments, which many jurists would have disposed of out of hand, resulted in long delays in the case and ultimately led to her dismissing the charges altogether.

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told Congress on Friday that on Jan. 21 the Treasury Department will have to begin using “extraordinary measures” to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt.

The warning was likely one of Ms. Yellen’s final acts as Treasury secretary before the Trump administration assumes power at noon on Monday.

The debt limit — which caps the amount of money that the United States is authorized to borrow to fund the government and meet its financial obligations — will now be the problem of the next Treasury secretary, along with President-elect Donald J. Trump and the lawmakers who must decide its fate.

Mr. Trump has tapped Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager, to lead the Treasury Department. The job requires Senate confirmation.

In her letter, Ms. Yellen sought to remind lawmakers that the debt limit simply allows the government to pay for spending that Congress has already approved.

“The debt limit does not authorize new spending, but it creates a risk that the federal government might not be able to finance its existing legal obligations that Congresses and presidents of both parties have made in the past,” Ms. Yellen said in the letter. “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

The debt limit was suspended in June 2023 after a contentious negotiation over federal spending, work requirements for receiving government benefits and funding for the Internal Revenue Service.

That suspension was scheduled to expire on Jan. 2, forcing the Treasury Department to begin using so-called extraordinary measures to allow the federal government to keep paying its bills. However, because of a technical issue related to federal investments, Ms. Yellen said in December that she expected extraordinary measures would have to be employed sometime between Jan. 14 and Jan. 23.

Those measures are essentially accounting maneuvers that can prevent the government from breaching the debt limit. They can include suspending certain types of investments in savings plans for government workers.

As part of those moves, Ms. Yellen said, she will be unable to fully invest in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, and a “debt issuance suspension period” will now run from Jan. 21 through March 14. The Treasury Department is also suspending certain investments in the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund.

The United States borrows money to pay its bills and obligations, including funding for social safety net programs, interest on the national debt and salaries for members of the armed forces. If the United States is unable to raise the debt limit, it will soon be unable to make many of those payments, including to investors who have bought government debt. Failure to make those payments to bondholders would result in the United States’ effectively defaulting on its debt.

As lawmakers negotiated last month over a government spending bill, Mr. Trump complicated matters by making a last-minute push for Republicans to lift or eliminate the debt limit. Republicans have for years used the debt limit as leverage to force Democrats to go along with painful spending cuts while they are in power, so the gambit by Mr. Trump put members of his own party in a difficult position.

Ms. Yellen in 2021 called the debt limit “destructive” and said it should be eliminated. Her immediate predecessor as Treasury secretary, Steven T. Mnuchin, expressed similar sentiments in 2017 when he described it as a “somewhat ridiculous concept” that did not limit spending.

At his confirmation hearing this week, Mr. Bessent initially expressed skepticism about abolishing the debt limit, saying he would study the issue and survey market participants about the merits of such a plan.

Mr. Bessent then added that he would explore ways to end the debt limit if Mr. Trump continued to push for that and insisted that either way the United States would continue to pay its bills.

“The United States is not going to default if I’m confirmed,” Mr. Bessent said.

Ms. Yellen said it was unclear how long the extraordinary measures would be able to be used to avoid a default.

The Bipartisan Policy Center projects that the true “X-date,” which is when the nation could actually default, would most likely occur sometime this summer.

The Biden administration’s website devoted to reproductive and abortion rights quietly disappeared on Friday, three days before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes the oath office. A senior administration official said it was a protective move, so that the contents of the website would not be “lost to history” if the Trump team took it down.

The website, ReproductiveRights.gov, is under the purview of the Department of Health and Human Services and offered information on matters such as birth control and medication abortion. It also offered resources about emergency abortion care under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA, which requires hospitals to provide medically necessary care to stabilize patients in emergency situations. That law was at the heart of a recent Supreme Court case.

When Mr. Trump took office in 2017, the official said, his administration made changes to content on the website for the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS.gov, including removing certain sections. At the time, the entire contents of the website had not been archived, so some information created during the Obama administration was lost, said the official, who insisted on anonymity to disclose the agency’s reasoning.

The official said the department archived ReproductiveRights.gov and decommissioned the URL “to protect the information from tampering by the incoming administration.”

The dozens of major donors who are coming to Washington for inauguration weekend include some who paid big money to get seats for the swearing-in on Monday. The Rotunda at the Capitol is much smaller than the National Mall, of course, and so some of them tell me they’re expecting to be shuffled instead over to a watch party at Capital One Arena. A select group of the very biggest donors most likely will make it into the Capitol; others may end up in the arena’s suites. Expect there to be a lot of angling over the next 72 hours as donors try and get their money’s worth.

It came as little surprise when Republicans on Capitol Hill decided this month that the first bill they would push through Congress in the Trump era would be one to make it easier to deport immigrants accused of minor crimes.

After all, President-elect Donald J. Trump won election in November, sweeping Republicans to unified control of Congress, after a campaign promising a severe immigration crackdown.

What was less expected was what came next: Dozens of Democrats in the House and a smaller but critical bloc in the Senate joined the G.O.P. in pushing the legislation to the brink of enactment, culminating in a test vote on Friday that cleared the final hurdle to its passage.

It was an outcome that exposed major divisions among Democrats about how to position themselves on immigration, and foreshadowed the immense challenge of maintaining unity on a pressing topic that Mr. Trump has made his signature issue. After years of opposing Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda at every turn, some Democrats — particularly those who are looking toward potentially tough re-election campaigns — appear to have concluded that “hell no” is not a winning strategy, at least not in every case.

The dynamic was on display last week in the House, when 48 Democrats joined Republicans in supporting the Laken Riley Act, which would mandate the detention and potential deportation of undocumented migrants charged with burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting. Representative Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat whose Bronx district swung 22 points toward Mr. Trump, backed the bill after having opposed it 10 months ago.

“You have to meet people where they are, even if your ideological priors might lead you in a different direction,” Mr. Torres, who is exploring a run for governor, said in an interview. “I do worry that when we vote against bills like the Laken Riley Act, we run the risk of seeming out of touch with most Americans on the issue of immigration and border security.”

Mr. Torres said he was fully aware that Republicans had brought up the bill partly as a strategy to make Democrats’ positions on immigration appear extreme. But the correct response, he argued, was to simply accept what they were proposing, depriving them of the chance to score a political point.

“These bills are meant to put us in the position of defending what seems indefensible to most Americans,” Mr. Torres added. “Why should we allow the Republicans to continue to demagogue and weaponize the issue of immigration and border security against us?”

A similar scene unfolded in the Senate, where the bill — which died last year when Democrats in the chamber declined to take it up — drew the support of 10 Democrats in a test vote on Friday. That positioned it to clear Congress next week and quickly be signed by Mr. Trump. Four of those Democrats will face voters next year, and five represent states Mr. Trump carried in November.

“There was a blinding flash of common sense,” Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania and a cosponsor of the bill, said this week when asked why he thought more people in his party were lining up to support it. “I never suggested that it necessarily is a perfect bill, but I think it’s an appropriate one, and I think it’s a necessary one.”

(Mr. Fetterman did not vote on Friday, though he has been outspoken in making the case for why Democrats should support the bill.)

The action in both chambers offered a real-time glimpse of how Republicans have succeeded in using immigration to divide Democrats, effectively forcing them to choose between two unappealing options. They could oppose the bill on principle, and risk appearing to voters as though they were against locking up and deporting undocumented criminals. Or they could embrace it, ignoring their concerns that the measure could deprive immigrants of due process, and potentially lead to detaining and removing people who were wrongly accused.

A majority of Democrats stood firm in opposition, arguing that they need not sacrifice their values to win a messaging battle on immigration that Republicans had rigged against them.

“I don’t think we need to let Republicans dictate to us the terms upon which we convince voters that we are the better party in immigration,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and a lead negotiator of a bipartisan immigration deal that Republicans killed last year at Mr. Trump’s behest.

He said Democrats should instead change their messaging strategy, talking about border security “all the time” and not ceding so much airtime to Republicans on the issue.

But others, including Democrats from competitive districts or areas that swung heavily toward Mr. Trump in the election, backed the measure. Among the 10 who supported it in Friday’s Senate test were a handful from states Mr. Trump carried in November: Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. Another group that backed it is up for re-election next year: Senators Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Gary Peters of Michigan, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Mark Warner of Virginia.

Some Democrats who supported the measure argued it was better simply to concede the point and vote in favor of the bill, deflating Republican efforts to characterize them as lax on crime or illegal immigration.

“We should embrace that idea of securing the border and deporting criminals,” Representative Tom Suozzi, Democrat of New York, said last week on Fox News. He added that it would be a “big mistake” for Democrats to oppose such measures.

Mr. Suozzi, who represents Long Island, won a special election last year to replace the disgraced former Representative George Santos largely by talking about the need for border security and enforcement — two issues that arguably lost Democrats the majority in 2022. His victory was a model that others in the party tried to emulate in the lead-up to November, with mixed success.

Still, many Democrats said they were disappointed and frustrated that their colleagues would compromise their principles in a bid to mitigate attack ads or score political points with voters.

“Democrats will not win by abdicating our values and being Republican-like,” said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California. “What we have to do is say: ‘We are for a secure border. We are for deporting people convicted of violent felonies. But we don’t change our values.’”

The criminal cases of those accused of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, continued more or less normally on Friday, the last business day before President-elect Donald J. Trump returns to the White House.

Throughout his campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly vowed to issue pardons on his first day back in office to many, perhaps even most, of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on his behalf. But it remains less clear what he intends to do with the sprawling investigation of Jan. 6 — the largest single criminal inquiry the Justice Department has undertaken in its 155-year history.

After he is sworn in on Monday, Mr. Trump could order the Justice Department to simply stop pursuing any cases related to Jan. 6. But even with the change in administrations less than three days away, there was no sign at the federal courthouse in Washington, where all of the Jan. 6 proceedings have been heard, that federal prosecutors were pulling back or slowing down.

In one courtroom, Kellye SoRelle, the former lawyer for the Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced to a year in prison on charges of advising other members of the far-right group to delete their text messages after taking part in the Capitol attack.

Ms. SoRelle, who was once romantically linked to Stewart Rhodes, the former leader of the Oath Keepers, pleaded guilty in August to charges that included tampering with evidence and illegally entering a restricted area of the Capitol grounds.

In another courtroom, a jury trial continued for Jared L. Wise, a former F.B.I. agent charged with felony civil disorder and assault. Prosecutors say that Mr. Wise, who left the bureau in 2017 after stints in New York and Israel, confronted officers at the Capitol, calling them Nazis and encouraging a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters to kill them.

Five additional defendants were also sentenced — including one to 10 days in prison on charges of disorderly conduct and another to 37 months on assault charges.

Altogether, nearly 1,600 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack over the past four years. Two weeks ago, department officials said prosecutors were still weighing whether to bring charges against as many as 200 more people, including about 60 suspected of assaulting or impeding police officers during the riot.

As recently as Thursday, prosecutors unsealed charges against a new defendant, James Edward Porter, of Hot Springs, Ark. Mr. Porter was accused of grabbing a baton from an officer outside the Capitol and shoving another one.

Charging documents in his case revealed that the F.B.I. received its first tip about Mr. Porter on Jan. 15, 2021 — more than four years ago.

Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio on Friday named Lt. Gov. Jon Husted to fill the Senate seat being vacated by Vice President-elect JD Vance, elevating a veteran Republican politician and ally who came up in politics during the pre-Trump era.

“This is a serious, serious time in our history,” said Mr. DeWine, flanked by a beaming Mr. Husted at a news conference. “Serious times demand serious people.”

In naming Mr. Husted, Mr. DeWine passed over Vivek Ramaswamy, the former presidential candidate and pharmaceutical entrepreneur who has been leading a government-slashing initiative alongside Elon Musk and who had emerged as another possible choice.

Mr. Ramaswamy, who was selected by President-elect Donald J. Trump to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency with Mr. Musk, said in November that he was not interested in being considered for the Senate appointment. But Mr. DeWine met with Mr. Ramaswamy last weekend, the governor confirmed, also noting that he had considered a number of people for the Senate job.

The choice of Mr. Vance’s successor has important implications across Republican politics including for the Trump White House, the United States Senate and the Ohio governorship. Mr. Vance resigned his seat on Jan. 10, creating a vacancy for Mr. DeWine to fill.

Mr. Trump had gotten involved in the choice, meeting with Mr. DeWine and Mr. Husted late last year at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and resort, according to Ohio news reports. Mr. DeWine said he called Mr. Trump Friday morning and said he “seemed to be very happy, and said some very nice things about Jon Husted.”

But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump had suggested to Mr. Ramaswamy that he might be a good fit for the Senate seat, if offered to him, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation, which was first reported by The Washington Post.

Mr. Ramaswamy ran for president in the 2024 primary but almost never criticized Mr. Trump; he was quick to endorse him and emerged as a prominent surrogate.

During that race, Mr. Ramaswamy’s views on foreign policy and national security — which at times veered into conspiracy theories — drew sharp criticism from some of his Republican rivals.

On Friday, Mr. DeWine, a former congressman, senator and a vanishingly rare traditional pre-Trump Republican, noted the significant role U.S. senators play in foreign affairs and national security.

Now, Mr. Ramaswamy is widely expected to run for governor of Ohio in 2026, a post that Mr. Husted had been expected to seek.

In fact, after the election, Mr. DeWine, who cannot seek a third term under Ohio law, suggested he saw Mr. Husted following in his footsteps. “I’ve always said Jon Husted, based upon my six years working with him, he will be a great governor,” Mr. DeWine said at the time.

Mr. Husted will serve in the Senate through 2026, when a special election would be held to fill the final two years of Mr. Vance’s term.

Asked if he had abandoned his hopes to be governor, Mr. Husted replied, “I accepted this appointment with the full intention of running for this office.”

Mr. Husted, 57, who was born in the Detroit area but raised in rural, northwestern Ohio, has spent years in state government, holding positions including secretary of state, state senator and speaker of the State House of Representatives. He has often praised Mr. Trump, even as the DeWine administration has clashed at times with the president-elect.

But Mr. Husted quickly and repeatedly made overtures to the incoming administration at the news conference and noted that he had nominated Mr. Vance at the Republican National Convention.

“I really look forward to working with President Trump and Vice President Vance and the Republican majority, who have an America First agenda to fight inflation, stop illegal immigration and advance conservative values,” he said. “I will do all I can to help him and JD Vance be successful.”

He also refrained from taking positions on policy issues like support for Ukraine, saying he would “get to what I stand for on all of those other issues when I’m actually a U.S. senator.”

The race for that seat next year, along with the governor’s contest, could be highly competitive.

“I seriously doubt that it will avoid a contentious race for governor,” Mr. DeWine said. “Just stay tuned. You’re going to see how many people, you know, say that they’re running in both parties.”

Former Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, was defeated in his re-election bid last year but outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris’s showing in the state. He could look at either office next cycle. Former Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat whom Mr. Vance defeated in the 2022 Senate contest, could also consider a run next year.

Asked his thinking about the Senate seat or the governor’s office during an interview last week, Mr. Brown said he had made no decisions about his next steps but was “not ruling out anything.”

“I’m not just walking away,” he said, “but I don’t know what’s next.”

Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.

Trump’s inaugural parade is now expected to be incorporated into the viewing party at Capital One Arena in Washington, according to Trump’s social media post. The decision effectively means it is canceled.

Daniel Werfel, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, told the agency’s employees that he would end his term early and step down on Monday as President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office.

Mr. Trump has said he plans to nominate Billy Long, a former Republican congressman, to the role. Past presidents have treated the tax collector’s leader as a nonpartisan job that continues between administrations of different parties. President Biden chose Mr. Werfel, a former career civil servant and management consultant, to attempt a renaissance of the I.R.S., which Democrats have infused with billions in new funding that Republicans are now eager to cancel.

In a message to employees, Mr. Werfel said he had decided to step down after he concluded that it was the best way to support the next administration. Douglas O’Donnell, a career civil servant at the I.R.S. who currently has the No. 2 job, will serve as the acting commissioner, Mr. Werfel said.

“While leaving a job you love is never easy, I take comfort in knowing that the civil servant leaders and employees at the I.R.S. are the exact right team to effectively steward this organization forward until a new I.R.S. commissioner is confirmed,” he wrote.

With more than 80,000 employees, the I.R.S. is a central part of the federal government, collecting nearly $5 trillion in tax revenue last fiscal year. With $60 billion in additional funding approved by Democrats, the agency has in recent years tried to beef up tax collection for wealthy Americans and update its antiquated technology systems.

The I.R.S. has long been a villain to Republicans, who attack it as a political tool for Democrats. Mr. Long, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the agency, has scant tax experience beyond promoting a pandemic-era tax credit for small businesses that the I.R.S. has tried to shut down because of abuse. Republicans have already canceled $20 billion of the $80 billion Democrats originally envisioned for the I.R.S., and they have frozen $20 billion more.