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Entertainment

Met Opera’s Deal With Its Choristers Has Much less Financial savings Than It Sought

Met Opera’s Deal With Its Choristers Has Less Savings Than It Sought

The union representing the Metropolitan Opera’s chorus staved off calls for a 30-percent reduction in payroll costs that the company had said it needed to survive the pandemic. But the contract it tentatively agreed to will save the Met millions by modestly cutting pay, moving members to the union’s health insurance plan and reducing the size of the regular chorus.

The American Guild of Musical Artists was the first of the Met’s major unions to strike a deal with the company over pandemic pay cuts. Its members — who also include soloists, dancers, actors and stage managers — are currently learning about the specifics of the deal and are still voting on whether to ratify it.

For months, the Met’s management has said it was seeking to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent, which it said would effectively cut their take-home pay by around 20 percent. It said that half of its proposed pay cuts would be restored once ticket revenues and core donations returned to prepandemic levels.

But the tentative four-year contract the guild agreed to includes cost savings that appear to fall short of that goal, according to an outline of the deal provided by the union. (The union declined to specify the total value of the cuts it agreed to, and the Met declined to provide details.)

Most categories of employees the union represents, including choristers, will see 3.7 percent cuts to their pay, most of which will be restored after three years. For soloists who get paid per performance, the cuts are deeper, with the highest-paid soloists seeing a 12.7 percent cut that will be fully restored in three years.

There are no provisions in the deal that make the salary restoration contingent on box office numbers or donations.

“Considering what the Met was originally seeking in concessions, I think this tentative agreement was really the fairest resolution for our members,” said Leonard Egert, the national executive director of the guild.

As Broadway shows put tickets back on sale and performing arts groups across New York City plan their comebacks, the Met’s plan to return to its stage in September has been threatened by contentious labor disputes. While this deal is a hopeful sign, the Met remains involved in tense negotiations with the union that represents the orchestra, and it has yet to restart formal negotiations with the union representing stagehands, who have been locked out since late last year.

The Met, which says that it has lost $150 million in earned revenues since the coronavirus pandemic forced it to close its doors more than a year ago, said in a statement, “It’s very important for the Met’s plan to reopen in September that A.G.M.A. members ratify this agreement.”

The Met will save more than $2 million by moving guild members off its health insurance plan and onto the union’s plan, guild officials said. Employees may have to switch doctors and will likely pay more in out-of-pocket health care costs, said Sam Wheeler, a guild official who helped negotiate the deal.

To save money, the guild has allowed the Met to cut its regular, full-time chorus from 80 to 74 members, with one position set to be restored at the end of the contract. The positions will be cut through attrition, not terminations, guild officials said.

“This was a big give for the chorus,” Wheeler said, “but this was part of the shared sacrifice that we hope will get the Met open.”

The agreement includes a number of provisions that address diversity and inclusion efforts at the Met, which hired its first chief diversity officer earlier this year.

The Met agreed to send the guild an annual report about its effort to recruit applicants from underrepresented groups; to create a diversity, equity and inclusion committee associated with the guild; to start a demographic survey of its employees that includes questions about race and sexual orientation; to engage an organization to develop racial justice training for Met staff; and to ensure that hair stylists and makeup artists have “cultural competence” when it comes to working with cast members of color.

The deal also adds language to specify that guild members’ contracts can be canceled if they have engaged in certain kinds of serious misconduct — a measure that was not in the previous contract. The Met had proposed a morals clause that would have allowed it to terminate a contract under a broader range of circumstances, but the final agreement limited it to “truly serious conduct,” a guild spokeswoman, Alicia Cook, said.

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Politics

Prosecutors Are Stated to Have Sought Aggressive Method to Capitol Riot Inquiry

Prosecutors Are Said to Have Sought Aggressive Approach to Capitol Riot Inquiry

WASHINGTON – In the weeks following the deadly January 6 riot at the Capitol, federal prosecutors in Washington drew up a comprehensive plan to eradicate possible conspirators against the attackers and investigate them for links to the attack.

Prosecutors suggested that these lists could help organizers of the rally where President Donald J. Trump spoke just before the attack, anyone who helped pay the rioters to travel to Washington, and any member of the far-right groups that in the US include crowd that day.

Two of the prosecutors – trial lawyers who led the riot investigation – presented the plan to the FBI in late February, along with a roughly 25-page document setting out the strategy for uncovering possible conspiracies between the attackers and other people behind on condition of anonymity spoke to discuss an active investigation.

The aggressive plan was in line with the Justice Department’s public vow to indict those involved in the Capitol attack. But FBI officials flinched, citing concerns that the plan appeared to suggest investigating people with no evidence to suggest they committed crimes, and that doing so would be against the bureau’s policies and protection of the first amendment. It is not illegal to join any organization, including extremist groups, or to participate in protests or to fund travel to a rally.

FBI officials voiced their concern to officials at the Chief Justice Department in Washington, who eventually overturned the plan.

However, the decision by senior FBI and Justice Department officials to override the task force prosecutors came at a crucial time for the high-profile, far-reaching investigation, as the public and officials of the Biden government are accountable for the insurrection and called for a push to combat domestic extremism.

Justice Department and FBI spokesmen declined to comment.

The proposal also demonstrates the balancing act that newly sustained Justice Department leaders face as they attempt to counter domestic extremism and prevent terrorism without violating American civil liberties. The FBI was previously criticized for its response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the aspects of which were condemned as an attack on civil liberties, and for its Cointelpro campaign in the 1950s and 1960s to spy on civil rights leaders and others.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said last week that even as he led the investigation into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing during a previous stint at the Justice Department, investigators knew they needed to see to it that Americans’ civil liberties were protected.

“We promised to find the perpetrators, bring them to justice and do so in a way that respects the constitution,” Garland said.

FBI officials have emphasized the bureau’s efforts to stay within its boundaries when investigating protected activity. While preventing terrorism is a priority in the United States, “an investigation cannot be initiated solely on the basis of activities protected by the first amendment,” said Michael McGarrity, then head of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, in the year 2019 in a statement from the house.

The office relies in large part on its large network of informants who provide tips and information on how to start an investigation, said current and former members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. But agents cannot investigate people simply because they are members of groups that advocate violent, racist, or anti-government ideologies.

Washington prosecutors encountered this restriction while trying to identify and track down individuals who participated in the January 6 attack. They also investigated whether the attack was more than a spontaneous riot that broke out after an emotionally charged rally, limited by Mr Trump’s admonitions to his supporters to contest Congressional certification that afternoon of the election.

In February, some prosecutors expressed frustration at being obstructed by senior Justice Department officials overseeing the investigation in the weeks leading up to the swearing-in of Mr. Garland and other Biden officials.

Prosecutors wanted to know more about who had spoken to Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers, a militia whose members had played a prominent role in conspiracy cases charged by the government in connection with the attack.

In a message posted on the Oath Keepers website, Mr Rhodes had urged members to come to Washington and stand up for Mr Trump. He was also part of an operation to provide security to Mr. Trump’s close associates, including Roger J. Stone Jr., who spoke at the rally that day.

Prosecutors wanted a search warrant for Mr. Rhodes. Militias like the Oath Keepers and right-wing nationalist groups like the Proud Boys had for years managed to largely evade FBI control as their protests and other public activities remained within the law.

But with members of such groups in the Capitol on January 6, some prosecutors expressed the hope that they now had reason to investigate their staff and leaders.

However, the law does not prohibit pressuring people to take part in a protest or support a politician, even if the statements are provocative. and investigators found no evidence that Mr Rhodes had helped arrange anything more than bodyguards for the speakers.

Justice Department officials, including Michael R. Sherwin, an officer who was overseeing the January 6 investigation at the time, denied prosecutors’ request for a search warrant on Mr. Rhodes, according to two people who were briefed on the deliberations . They concluded that the prosecutors lacked a likely cause for doing so without violating his civil liberties and rights.

Following the dispute, two of the lead task force prosecutors contacted the FBI’s Terrorism Operations Department to inform investigators of their proposed strategy to review the insurgency. They suggested that investigators look at rally organizers and organizations such as militia groups.

Among the FBI officers who opposed the approach, according to those informed about the plan, was Deputy Director Paul M. Abbate. After office officials discussed the presentation with Justice Department officials, the assistant attorney general’s chiefs – including Matthew S. Axelrod, then the second-largest officer in the office – briefed Channing D. Phillips, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, on the Prosecutors would not take such an approach to the investigation.

The investigation, which continues to be led by federal attorneys and FBI agents in Washington, has led to the arrest of over 400 defendants in at least 45 states. About 30 were charged with more serious crimes, including conspiracy, according to the Justice Department.

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World News

Biden sought to rally allies in Munich as China affect grows

Biden sought to rally allies in Munich as China influence grows

It was intended that Joe Biden used the term “turning point” three times in his key foreign policy address as President on Friday. He wanted to make sure that the historical weight of his words was not overlooked.

Above all, he wanted his virtual audience at the Munich Security Conference to hear that the global democracies were experiencing a decisive moment in their accelerating struggle against authoritarianism and that they would not dare to underestimate the effort. It is an argument that I have made many times in this area, but one that has not been so clearly formulated by a US president.

“We are in the midst of a profound debate about the future and direction of our world,” Biden said to a receptive audience, though it was also an audience unsettled by President Trump’s sudden, if welcome, departure from the cold shower of President Trump’s America was first to the global embrace of his successor.

“We are at a turning point,” said Biden, “between those who argue that autocracy is the best way to go in the face of all the challenges from the fourth industrial revolution to the global pandemic … and those who understand that democracy.” is important, important to master these challenges. “

Biden’s picture, which was beamed from the White House to Munich, was symbolically framed on the large screens of the main stage next to Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron. After each of their three 15-minute speeches, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had just finished chairing a virtual meeting of G7 leaders, joined them for the Kumbaya Moment.

Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, had every reason to be satisfied when he called this reunification of the four allies who had done so much to repair Europe after the devastation of World War II. Working with partners, these four countries took the lead in creating rule-based institutions that have been at the heart of global governance for 75 years.

However, what lurked beneath this powerful moment was the growing recognition among senior government officials in Biden and their European counterparts of how difficult it will be to slow down China’s authoritarian dynamism, especially if it turns out to be the first major economy to escape Covid-19 to restore growth, conduct vaccine diplomacy and offer the lure of its 1.4 billion consumers.

Therefore, the Biden government needs to develop a far more creative, intense, and far more collaborative approach to give and take towards its Asian and European allies than perhaps ever before. Electroplating the international common cause has rarely been so important, but maybe it was never so difficult.

There are mutliple reasons for this.

First, any US policy must take into account China’s role as a leading trading partner for most of America’s major partners, including the dethroning of the United States in 2020 for the first time as the European Union’s leading trading partner.

This will lead most European countries and Germany in particular not to worry about decoupling from the Chinese economy or entering into a new Cold War. The United States must be careful to consider the political and economic needs of its partners – and recognize that it is unlikely to take a common, coordinated position on China without a cold hearted calculation of its own national interests.

President Biden took this into account in his speech. “We cannot and must not return to the reflexive opposition and rigid blocks of the Cold War,” he said. “Competition must not block our cooperation on issues that affect us all. For example, we must work together if we want to defeat Covid-19 everywhere.”

Second, European doubts about the reliability of the American partnership will persist for some time, especially given former President Trump’s continued popularity, the political appeal of his “America First” policy, and his continued role in Republican politics after the Senate’s acquittal .

This can lead to many European officials hedge their bets.

A new survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations found that 57% of respondents saw Biden’s victory as beneficial to the European Union, but 60% believe that China will become more powerful than the US in the next decade, and 32% believe that that the US can no longer trust this.

Third, the Biden government and its European partners must work to resolve or avoid unresolved problems so that they do not compromise the chance of a fresh start. These range from continued Trump administration tariffs and sanctions to Airbus-Boeing trade disputes and German-American battles over the completion of the North Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Western Europe.

Work to complete the pipeline from Russia halted last year despite investing US $ 10 billion and 94% completion of the project due to secondary US sanctions.

In particular, the Biden administration must proactively work with EU leaders to avoid looming struggles on how best to manage and regulate the influence of American tech giants, including competition, data management, privacy and security issues digital taxation.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told CNBC that President Biden was an “ally” in combating disinformation on the Internet and in tightening the rules of the way technology companies operate. The growing EU talk about “digital sovereignty”, however, underscores the potential for digital conflicts across the Atlantic.

Eventually, the reluctance of the Biden administration to begin new trade negotiations – and the lack of a sufficient Democratic or Republican constituency for such dealings – will keep the United States one hand behind its back with Beijing.

In the meantime, China has reached out to Asian partners through the 15-strong Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and a new Comprehensive EU-China Investment Agreement (CAI).

The thing about historical turning points is that they can turn in positive or negative directions with generational ramifications. President Biden made good sense to draw our attention to our crucial moment. So there can be no excuse if the US and its global partners do not engage in the hard work that is required to meet this epoch-making challenge.

Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, award-winning journalist, and President and CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of the most influential US think tanks on global affairs. He worked for the Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant editor-in-chief and senior editor for the European edition of the newspaper. His latest book – “Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth” – was a New York Times best seller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter @FredKempe and subscribe here to Inflection Points, his view every Saturday of the top stories and trends of the past week.

More information from CNBC staff can be found here @ CNBCopinion on twitter.

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Politics

Trump Raised $255.four Million in eight Weeks as He Sought to Overturn Election Consequence

Trump Raised $255.4 Million in 8 Weeks as He Sought to Overturn Election Result

President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party raised $ 255.4 million in the more than eight weeks following the November 3 election, new federal records show, as he attempted to undermine the results on unsubstantiated fraud allegations to reverse.

Mr Trump’s strongest fundraising came immediately after the election, for example after major media organizations announced that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won on November 7th. Yet even when Mr Trump and his legal team lost the case afterwards – in places like the Supreme Court – his donors continued to give repeats. From November 24th through the end of the year, more than two million contributions went to Mr. Trump, the Republican National Committee and their joint accounts.

The donations were posted over the weekend on a Federal Election Commission filing by WinRed, the digital platform that Republicans use to process online donations. Mr. Trump’s campaign committee, joint committees with the RNC, and the new political action committee he formed after the elections, Save America, will be filing additional information on Sunday with more details on spending and fundraising.

Mr Trump had previously announced that he and the RNC raised $ 207.5 million in the first month after the election. The new records show that his fundraising fell sharply in December compared to November, particularly after December 14, the day the electoral college officially cast its ballot to make Mr Biden the 46th president of the nation, and the reality possibly. Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters spoke of the futility of trying to reverse the outcome.

In the two weeks leading up to the electoral college vote, Mr Trump and the RNC had raised an average of $ 2.9 million a day online. In the two weeks that followed, the average was $ 1.2 million.

In fact, Mr Trump and the RNC had raised more than $ 2 million online every day since the election through December 14. For the remainder of the year, through December 31st, when donations are made at the end of the year.

The new numbers capture almost all of Mr. Trump’s online fundraising drives when he stopped raising money on Jan. 6, addressing a crowd of supporters who then stormed the Capitol in a violent uproar and the Mr. Biden was officially ratified by Congress as the next President.

After this uprising, Mr Trump essentially stopped sending donations to his supporters (the RNC took a break of about a week). His last campaign email that day began: “TODAY is going to be a historic day in our nation’s history.”

Even so, Mr Trump left office with the tens of millions of dollars raised for his new Save America PAC, which he can use to fund a post-president political operation, including travel and staff.

But Mr Trump is still facing a surge in legal costs as an impeachment trial in the Senate is set to begin in just over a week. Late on Saturday, Mr Trump abruptly parted ways with senior attorney Butch Bowers to defend his impeachment.

In his first impeachment, the RNC covered some of the legal costs for Mr Trump for being the sitting president and the party leader. These costs included a payment of $ 196,000 to Alan Dershowitz, the attorney who was part of Mr. Trump’s defense team.

It is not clear what role the RNC will play in the impending impeachment, but the party’s coffers have benefited immensely from Mr. Trump’s aggressive fundraising as he spread conspiracy theories about electoral fraud. About 25 percent of the funds raised through Mr. Trump’s email and text messaging operations were earmarked for the RNC

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Politics

The Highway to Clemency From Trump Was Closed to Most Who Sought It

The Road to Clemency From Trump Was Closed to Most Who Sought It

“When we worked on grace during the Obama administration, it was based on objective criteria, not the recommendations of a political ally or celebrity,” said Kevin Ring, who was and is in federal prison for his role in the Jack Abramoff lobby scandal President of the FAMM Criminal Justice Reform Group, formerly known as Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

The group operates a closed Facebook forum for 7,000 family members of inmates, which was filled with anxious but excited messages of prayer and hopes for relatives to be released ahead of the final round of Mr. Trump’s grace grants issued 12 hours earlier The institution.

“And I was incredibly sad because I thought you really have next to no chance because he didn’t use the process your loved one would be in the mix for in the first place,” said Mr. Ring.

Even some beneficiaries of Mr Trump’s grace grants admit the process is not fair.

There are “so many thousands of inmates who never get a chance to put their names on there, it’s just so unfair,” said Barry Wachsler, who paid the legal fees related to the appeals process and Mr Weinstein’s reprieve. “Does it help if you have the money and the right connections? You know i think so It definitely does. “

Mr. Wachsler, a Long Island businessman, said he met Mr. Weinstein by chance five years ago while visiting a friend in federal prison who introduced the two men.

Weinstein, 45, pleaded guilty in 2013 to indicting a Ponzi-style real estate program that resulted in losses of $ 200 million, much of which was from investors in an Orthodox Jewish community in New Jersey, with which he was connected. Prosecutors said he had won the trust of potential victims by recruiting rabbis to vouch for him and by donating his illicit profits to Jewish organizations.

In 2014, he pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding additional investors, including falsely claiming access to coveted Facebook shares in the company’s upcoming IPO and the means to pay legal fees related to his previous one Charge used.

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Entertainment

Elias Rahbani, Lebanese Composer Who Sought New Sounds, Dies at 82

Elias Rahbani, Lebanese Composer Who Sought New Sounds, Dies at 82

On the Friday evening before the coronavirus hit Beirut, a pulsating crowd of partygoers stomped on the roof of a warehouse overlooking the harbor, dancing retro and fresh to music at the same time. His beat was unstoppable, his sound a mixture of lush Arabic diva melody, French pop from the 1960s and disco.

The musical mix did not require modern adjustments by a DJ. It was just another Elias Rahbani experiment.

From the 1960s to 1980s, Mr Rahbani, a Lebanese composer and lyricist who died of Covid-19 on January 4 at the age of 82, wrote instant classics for the Arab world’s most popular singers, commercial jingles, political anthems, movie soundtracks and Music for underground and experimental Arab artists.

The Rahbani sound was omnipresent. Many Lebanese people remember the jingles he wrote for picon cheese or Rayovac batteries, or the love themes he composed in 1974 for popular TV shows and films such as “Habibati” (“My Beloved”). His style changed often: he was one of the first composers to combine western electric instruments with traditional Arabic and combine western genres – prog rock, funk, R&B – with traditional Lebanese dabke folk dance music.

“His music is engraved in the memory of all Lebanese,” said Ernesto Chahoud, a Lebanese DJ who runs the Beirut Groove Collective, which hosted the camp parties. “He’s made great Arabic music, great Lebanese music, and at the same time he’s done all these western styles. That’s why it’s timeless. That’s why a lot of people want to hear his music today. “

He was never the face of the songs, unlike the celebrities he wrote for, including Fayrouz, the legendary Lebanese singer with the passed out voice, or Sabah, the film and music star with the golden hair. Along with his older brothers Mansour and Assi Rahbani – the musical duo of the Rahbani brothers – Elias Rahbani was popular among Lebanon’s political, religious and class divisions.

Still, he had ambitions that exceeded the borders of tiny Lebanon. One of his sons, Ghassan, said Mr Rahbani nearly signed a contract with a French company in 1976 that would have given him a wider audience and perhaps greater control over the rights to his music. it would also have meant moving to France. However, at the last minute he was overtaken by an onslaught of fondness for his country and decided not to sign.

Updated

Jan. 26, 2021, 7:36 ET

“My father lived with regret for the rest of his life,” said Ghassan Rahbani. Mr Rahbani died in a hospital in Beirut, his family said.

When he rejected the French treaty, Lebanon had just gotten into civil war. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the fighting from 1975 to 1990. When it became too dangerous for Mr. Rahbani to travel to his usual studio in Beirut, he set up a makeshift facility in his apartment north of the city. He later evacuated to a rental property further north.

But he stayed productive.

Mr. Rahbani produced more than 6,000 tunes, said Mr. Chahoud. He wrote for pop stars; He wrote for an Armenian-Lebanese band, The News, who rode Mr. Rahbani’s psychedelic rock compositions to gain international recognition. He has written for political parties across the spectrum, including the Baathist Party of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

When asked about his political sympathies, he refused to be labeled. “I am above all, and everyone comes to me,” he once said, according to his son Ghassan.

Elias Hanna Rahbani was born on June 26, 1938 in Antelias, Lebanon, north of Beirut, to Hanna Assi Rahbani, a restaurant owner, and Saada Saab Rahbani, a housewife. The elder Mr. Rahbani played the bouzok, a lutel-like instrument. He died when Elias was 5 years old.

Elias Rahbani told Mr. Chahoud that he started playing the piano as a child after hearing hymns from the monastery near his family home. He became a pianist, but an injury to his right thumb forced him to switch to composing at the age of 19, said his son Ghassan. He finally got his big break while working for Radio Lebanon and writing songs for the singer Sabah.

Mr. Rahbani often worked with his older brothers who became famous for having written much of Fayrouz’s music. Although Mr. Rahbani wrote for many mainstream artists, he increasingly experimented with new sounds from around the world and often provided the material that helped kick-start the careers of little-known Lebanese bands and singers. Funk, French-Arabic, Latin American music, psychedelic rock and the French pop yé-yé all influenced his work.

In the 1970s, Mr. Rahbani was one of the first musicians to introduce western drums, electric guitars and synthesizers to Arabic music and use them in albums such as the traditional oud (which also resembles a lute) and the durbakke (a small hand drum) one inserted “Mosaic of the Orient.” Mr Chahoud said tracks on the album had been sampled far outside Lebanon, including by the Black Eyed Peas.

In recent years, Western-influenced Arabic music from Mr. Rahbani’s time has become popular in clubs and on internet radio in the Middle East and beyond. It is often played by DJs browsing vintage record and tape archives to find and promote songs by lesser known artists. well-known Arab artists.

But in Lebanon, Mr. Rahbani never left the soundtrack.

Hwaida Saad contributed to the coverage.

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Politics

Supreme Courtroom rejects Trump backed lawsuit that sought to overturn Biden election victory

Supreme Court rejects Trump backed lawsuit that sought to overturn Biden election victory

United States President Donald Trump looks on during a ceremony to present wrestler Dan Gable with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on December 7, 2020.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

The United States Supreme Court on Friday rejected an offer tabled by Texas and backed by President Donald Trump in an attempt to undo Joe Biden’s election victories in key swing states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The ruling dealt a death blow to Trump’s desperate and unsuccessful efforts to undo Biden’s planned victory at the electoral college. It took three days for voters to cast their ballots in their respective states and for Biden’s victory to be finalized.

Suffrage experts said from the start that the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed. But Trump, who himself had applied to intervene in the case, had hyped Paxton’s lawsuit as “the big one”.

The court on Friday denied Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to file the lawsuit against the four battlefield states. The judges said Paxton didn’t have reasons to sue the other states over changes they made to their voting procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Texas state’s application for permission to file a notice of appeal is denied due to a lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution,” the court said.

“Texas has shown no judicial interest in the way any other state conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as in dispute.”

Trump, who appointed three judges to the nine-member court, had said ahead of the November 3rd election that he believed the Supreme Court would ultimately decide the race.

“I think it is very important that we have nine judges,” Trump said shortly after the death of the liberal judiciary Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September.

Biden spokesman Mike Gwin said in a statement on Friday evening that the court had “decided and quickly rejected the recent attack by Donald Trump and his allies on the democratic process.”

“This is no surprise – dozens of judges, election officials from both parties and Trump’s own attorney general have rejected his baseless attempts to deny that he lost the election,” said Gwin. “The clear and authoritative victory of President-elect Biden will be confirmed by the electoral college on Monday and sworn in on January 20th.”

The Texas lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to invalidate the election results of the four battlefield states by stating that their votes “cannot be counted” in the electoral college.

Biden’s victories in the four states, which together had 62 votes, had brought him over the 270-vote threshold required to secure the presidency. Biden is expected to win 306 votes, compared to 232 for Trump.

If Texas had won the lawsuit, it would have canceled Biden’s victory.

Two of the most conservative Supreme Court justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, said in brief disagreement that they allowed Paxton’s lawsuit to be filed, but added that they would “grant no other relief” requested in the case .

“In my view, there is no discretion to refuse to file a notice of appeal in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction,” Alito wrote in a statement backed by Thomas. “I would therefore grant the request to file the notice of appeal, but would not grant any other relief, and I do not express an opinion on any other subject.”

More than a dozen states in which Trump won the referendum filed briefs in support of Texas’s action. More than 120 Republican members of Congress, including House Minority Chairman Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Filed similar Friend of the Court letters shortly thereafter.

But about two dozen states and territories that Biden had won filed their own pleadings against the Texas appeal.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., In a damning letter from her dear colleague on Friday afternoon, accused the Republicans of supporting the case of “electoral subversion that threatens our democracy”.

“This lawsuit is an act of GOP desperation that violates the principles enshrined in our American democracy,” wrote Pelosi.

“As members of Congress, we take a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution,” her letter said. “The Republicans are undermining the Constitution through their ruthless and fruitless assault on our democracy, which threatens to seriously undermine public confidence in our most sacred democratic institutions and slow our progress on the urgent challenges ahead.”

Rudy Giuliani, the attorney who spearheaded Trump’s efforts to reverse Biden’s victory through legal proceedings, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska who has clashed with Trump, said in a statement that the Supreme Court has finally “closed the book on the nonsense.”

“Since election night, a lot of people have puzzled voters by turning the Kenyan birther guy. ‘Chavez carved the election out of the grave conspiracy theories,’ but any rule of law American should take comfort that the Colonel The court – including all three tips from President Trump – closed the book on the nonsense, “he said.

Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel, who represented her state against Paxton’s lawsuit, said the ruling was “an important reminder that we are a nation of laws, and while some may bow to the wishes of a single person, they will.” Courts don’t do this. “

NBC News legal analyst Benjamin Wittes noted that while Alito and Thomas opposed the decision, they likely would have opposed it on the matter.