WASHINGTON — Democratic officials in 19 states filed a lawsuit Thursday against President Donald Trump’s attempt to reshape elections across the U.S., calling it an unconstitutional invasion of states’ clear authority to run their own elections.

The lawsuit is the fourth against the executive order issued just a week ago. It seeks to block key aspects of it, including new requirements that people provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a demand that all mail ballots be received by Election Day.

“The President has no power to do any of this,” the state attorneys general wrote in court documents. “The Elections EO is unconstitutional, antidemocratic, and un-American.”

Trump’s order said the U.S. has failed “to enforce basic and necessary election protection.” Election officials have said recent elections have been among the most secure in U.S. history. There has been no indication of any widespread fraud, including when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

The order is the culmination of Trump’s longstanding complaints about how U.S. elections are run. After his first win in 2016, Trump falsely claimed his popular vote total would have been much higher if not for “millions of people who voted illegally.” In 2020, Trump blamed a “rigged” election for his loss and falsely claimed widespread voter fraud and manipulation of voting machines.

Trump has argued his order secures the vote against illegal voting by noncitizens, though multiple studies and investigations in the states have shown that it’s rare.

It has received praise from the top election officials in some Republican states who say it could inhibit instances of voter fraud and will give them access to federal data to better maintain their voter rolls.

The order also requires states to exclude any mail-in or absentee ballots received after Election Day, and puts states’ federal funding at risk if election officials don’t comply. Some states count ballots as long as they are postmarked by Election Day or allow voters to correct minor errors on their ballots.

Forcing states to change, the suit says, would violate the broad authority the Constitution gives states to set their own election rules. It says they decide the “times, places and manner” of how elections are run.

Congress has the power to “make or alter” election regulations, at least for federal office, but the Constitution doesn’t mention any presidential authority over election administration.

“We are a democracy – not a monarchy – and this executive order is an authoritarian power grab,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said the Trump administration is requiring states to either comply with an unconstitutional order or lose congressionally approved funding, something he said the president has no authority to do.

“In one fell swoop, this president is attempting to undermine elections and sidestep the Congress, and we’re not going to stand for it,” he said.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Trump’s executive order was an attempt to impose “sweeping voting restrictions” across the country and disenfranchise voters.

The attorney general and secretary of state in Nevada, a presidential battleground, defended their state’s elections as fair, secure and transparent, and objected to the president’s attempt to interfere in how they are run. Attorney General Aaron Ford praised Nevada’s automatic systems for registering voters and distributing mail ballots.

“While this order is on its face unconstitutional and illegal, it is also unnecessary,” he said.

A request for comment sent to the White House was not immediately returned.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts by the Democratic attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Other lawsuits filed over the order argue it could disenfranchise voters because millions of eligible voting-age Americans do not have the proper documents readily available. People are already required to attest to being citizens, under penalty of perjury, in order to vote.

Under the order, documents acceptable to prove citizenship would be a U.S. passport, a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license that “indicates the applicant is a citizen,” and a valid photo ID as long as it is presented with proof of citizenship.

Democrats argue that millions of Americans do not have easy access to their birth certificates, about half don’t have a U.S. passport, and married women would need multiple documents if they had changed their name. That was a complication for some women during recent town elections in New Hampshire, the first ones held under a new state law requiring proof of citizenship to register.

Not all REAL ID-compliant driver’s licenses designate U.S. citizenship.

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Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Tran Nguyen in Sacramento, California, Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, and Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s shoot-from-the-lip style kept Americans on the edge of their seats during last year’s campaign. But now that he’s speaking as a president and not as a candidate, his words are being used against him in court in the blizzard of litigation challenging his agenda.

The spontaneity is complicating his administration’s legal positions. Nowhere has this been clearer than in cases involving Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, the driving force in Trump’s efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government.

The latest example came earlier this week, when U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled that Musk had likely violated the Constitution by dismantling the United States Agency for International Development.

The lawsuit turned on the question of whether the billionaire entrepreneur had overstepped his authority. Justice Department lawyers and White House officials insist that Musk is merely a presidential adviser, not the actual leader of DOGE.

But Trump has said otherwise — in speeches, interviews and public remarks — and Chuang quoted him extensively in his decision.

Trump most notably boasted of creating DOGE during his primetime address to a joint session of Congress and said it was “headed by Elon Musk.” Republicans gave Musk a standing ovation, who saluted from the gallery above the House chamber.

“Trump’s words were essential, central and indispensable,” said Norm Eisen, one of the lawyers for USAID employees who filed the lawsuit. “His admissions took what would have been a tough case and made it into a straightforward one.”

The looseness with words is a shift from predecessors like President Barack Obama, who used to say that he was careful because anything he said could send troops marching or markets tumbling.

Trump has no such feeling of restraint, and neither do other members of his administration like Musk.

Chuang, who is based in Maryland and was appointed by Obama, also cited social media posts from Musk, who writes frequently on X, the platform that he owns.

For example, Musk posted “we spent the weekend feeding USAID to the woodchipper” on Feb. 3. The agency was being brought to a standstill at that time, with staff furloughed, spending halted and headquarters shut down.

“Musk’s public statements and posts … suggest that he has the ability to cause DOGE to act,” Chuang wrote in his ruling.

Harrison Fields, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, said Trump was fulfilling his campaign promise “to make the federal government more efficient and accountable to taxpayers.”

“Rogue bureaucrats and activist judges attempting to undermine this effort are only subverting the will of the American people and their obstructionist efforts will fail,” he said.

Anthony Coley, who led public affairs at the Justice Department during President Joe Biden’s administration, said statements involving civil litigation were always coordinated between his office and the West Wing.

“The words could be used to support what we’re doing or undermine what we’re doing,” he said. “It’s a carefully choreographed effort to make sure there was no daylight between what was said in the court of public opinion and what could ultimately play out in the court of law.”

In comparison to how things were done in the past, Coley said, Trump has a “ready-fire-aim approach of doing business.”

Trump doesn’t usually let legal disputes force him to turn down the volume. During a criminal investigation over his decision to keep classified records at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House following his first term, Trump spoke extensively about the case in an interview with Fox News.

Longtime defense lawyers were startled — defendants are usually encouraged to keep mum while facing an indictment. But the situation panned out for Trump. His legal team delayed the case, and the special counsel’s office dropped the charges after he won the election because presidents can’t be prosecuted while in office.

DOGE has been the focus of nearly two dozen lawsuits. It’s often prevailed so far in cases involving access to government data, where several plaintiffs have struggled to convince judges to block the organization’s actions.

But it’s also run into challenges, such as a lawsuit over whether DOGE must comply with public records requests. The Trump administration asserted in court that DOGE is part of the White House, meaning it’s exempt.

Judge Christopher Cooper, also appointed by Obama, disagreed, siding with a government watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.

“Musk and the President’s public statements indicate that USDS” — the original acronym for the organization that was renamed as DOGE — “is in fact exercising substantial independent authority,” wrote Cooper, who is based in Washington.

Cooper concluded that DOGE can “identify and terminate federal employees, federal programs, and federal contracts. Doing any of those three things would appear to require substantial independent authority; to do all three surely does.”

He ordered DOGE to start responding to requests about the team’s role in mass firings and disruptions to federal programs. The administration unsuccessfully asked the judge to reconsider, saying the judge “fundamentally misapprehended” the agency’s structure.

Just because Musk claims credit online for deep agency cuts, doesn’t necessarily translate to DOGE having authority in the eyes of the law, Stanford Law School professor Michael McConnell argued in a recent debate on the issue.

DOGE is recommending changes, he said, but it’s the agency heads who are actually putting them into effect.

“And that’s all that the courts are going to care about as to what the Supreme Court is going to do,” McConnell said at the debate hosted by the National Constitution Center.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Elon Musk called Thursday to “delete entire agencies” from the United States’ federal government as part of his push under President Donald Trump to radically cut spending and restructure its priorities.

Musk offered a wide-ranging survey via a videocall to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, of what he described as the priorities of the Trump administration interspersed with multiple references to “thermonuclear warfare” and the possible dangers of artificial intelligence.

“We really have here rule of the bureaucracy as opposed to rule of the people — democracy,” Musk said, wearing a black T-shirt that read: “Tech Support.” He also joked that he was the “White House’s tech support,” borrowing from his profile on the social platform X, which he owns.

“I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Musk said. “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”

While Musk has spoken to the summit in the past, his appearance Thursday comes as he has consolidated control over large swaths of the government with Trump’s blessing since assuming leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency. That’s included sidelining career officials, gaining access to sensitive databases and inviting a constitutional clash over the limits of presidential authority.

Musk’s new role imbued his comments with more weight beyond being the world’s wealthiest person through his investments in SpaceX and electric carmaker Tesla.

His remarks also offered a more-isolationist view of American power in the Middle East, where the U.S. has fought wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

“A lot of attention has been on USAID for example,” Musk said, referring to Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. “There’s like the National Endowment for Democracy. But I’m like, ‘Okay, well, how much democracy have they achieved lately?’”

He added that the U.S. under Trump is “less interested in interfering with the affairs of other countries.”

There are “times the United States has been kind of pushy in international affairs, which may resonate with some members of the audience,” Musk said, speaking to the crowd in the UAE, an autocratically ruled nation of seven sheikhdoms.

“Basically, America should mind its own business, rather than push for regime change all over the place,” he said.

He also noted the Trump administration’s focus on eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion work, at one point linking it to AI.

“If hypothetically, AI is designed for DEI, you know, diversity at all costs, it could decide that there’s too many men in power and execute them,” Musk said.

On AI, Musk said he believed X’s newly updated AI chatbot, Grok 3, would be ready in about two weeks, calling it at one point “kind of scary.” He criticized Sam Altman’s management of OpenAI, which Musk just led a $97.4 billion takeover bid for, describing it as akin to a nonprofit aimed at saving the Amazon rainforest becoming a “lumber company that chops down the trees.”

Musk also announced plans for a “Dubai Loop” project in line with his work in the Boring Company — which is digging tunnels in Las Vegas to speed transit. However, he and the Emirati government official speaking with him offered no immediate details of the plan.

“It’s going to be like a wormhole,” Musk promised. “You just wormhole from one part of the city — boom — and you’re out in another part of the city.”

President Donald Trump has just started his second term, his last one permitted under the U.S. Constitution. But he’s already started making quips about serving a third one.

“Am I allowed to run again?” Trump joked during the House Republican retreat in Florida last month. Whether teasing or taunting, it seems to be part of a pattern. Just a week after he won election last fall, Trump suggested in a meeting with House Republicans that he might want to stick around after his second term was over.

“I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we got to figure something else out,’” Trump said to laughs from the lawmakers.

Over the years, Trump and his supporters have often joked about him serving more than his two constitutionally permitted terms. But his musings often spark alarm among his critics, given that he unsuccessfully tried to overturn his 2020 election loss and has since pardoned supporters who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But Trump, who will be 82 when his term ends, has repeatedly said that this will be his last term. Trying for another also would flatly violate the Constitution.

Here are some questions and answers related to Trump’s occasional comments about a third term:

“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” begins the 22nd Amendment, adopted after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times in a row. He was last elected in 1944.

It’s a fairly straightforward ban on serving more than two terms. Some Trump supporters argue the language is meant to apply only to two consecutive terms because Roosevelt’s terms were consecutive, but notably that’s not what the amendment says.

Others contend that because the ban is just on being “elected” more than twice, Trump could run as the next president’s vice president and, if the ticket won, could simply replace that person if he or she resigns. To put it mildly, that would be quite a complex plan to pull off, in no small part because Trump would be 82 during the next election, a year older than former President Joe Biden was during last year’s campaign.

At least one Republican in Congress has been bold enough to propose a constitutional amendment that would allow Trump to seek another term. It has no chance of going anywhere, given the high bar for amending the Constitution.

Even assuming Trump would attempt another run, a combination of election officials and courts would virtually ensure that he stayed off the ballot.

State officials have long kept would-be candidates off presidential ballots if they didn’t meet the basic constitutional criteria, such as being a natural-born U.S. citizen or being at least 35 years old. They would do the same with someone clearly violating the limit on presidential terms.

A version of this unfolded in 2023, when a few states tried to keep Trump off the ballot because they found he violated the 14th Amendment’s ban on officials who engaged in insurrection. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed those decisions because no one had ever used the insurrection clause on a presidential candidate before and there were a lot of legal questions about its implementation.

There would be no similar questions about the meaning of the 22nd Amendment, said Derek Muller, a professor at Notre Dame Law School.

“You would not have the factual disputes, so it would be much wider,” Muller said of the number of states keeping Trump off their ballots. “I’m not persuaded the Supreme Court is going to roll over.”

Trump has a long history of taunting his critics to flex his power, but there also could be a strategic reason for his keeping the third-term discussion alive.

Trump is a lame duck president in his final term. Because these politicians will never be on the ballot for the same office again, their political clout usually wanes quickly. The third-term flirtation is a way to try to convince people that Trump will be around in the future.

Trump’s aggressive actions at the start of his new term shows that Trump knows his time is dwindling, Muller said.

“He’s governing like he’s a lame duck right now, with nothing to lose,” Muller said.

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NEW YORK — The White House blocked an Associated Press reporter from an event in the Oval Office on Tuesday after demanding the news agency alter its style on the Gulf of Mexico, which President Donald Trump has ordered renamed the Gulf of America.

The reporter, whom the AP would not identify, tried to enter the White House event as usual Tuesday afternoon and was turned away. Later, a second AP reporter was barred from a late-evening event in the White House Diplomatic Room.

The highly unusual ban, which Trump administration officials had threatened earlier Tuesday unless the AP changed the style on the Gulf, could have constitutional free-speech implications.

Julie Pace, AP’s senior vice president and executive editor, called the administration’s move unacceptable.

“It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism,” Pace said in a statement. “Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”

The Trump administration made no immediate announcements about the moves, and there was no indication any other journalists were affected. Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the media. On Friday, the administration ejected a second group of news organizations from Pentagon office space.

Before his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump announced plans to change the Gulf of Mexico’s name to the “Gulf of America” — and signed an executive order to do so as soon as he was in office. Mexico’s president responded sarcastically and others noted that the name change would probably not affect global usage.

Besides the United States, the body of water — named the Gulf of Mexico for more than 400 years — also borders Mexico.

The AP said last month, three days after Trump’s inauguration, that it would continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico while noting Trump’s decision to rename it as well. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP says it must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.

AP style is not only used by the agency. The AP Stylebook is relied on by thousands of journalists and other writers globally.

Barring the AP reporter was an affront to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bars the government from impeding the freedom of the press, said Tim Richardson, program director of journalism and misinformation for PEN America.

The White House Correspondents Association called the White House move unacceptable and called on the administration to change course.

“The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decision,” said Eugene Daniels, WHCA’s president.

This week, Google Maps began using “Gulf of America,” saying it had a “longstanding practice” of following the U.S. government’s lead on such matters. The other leading online map provider, Apple Maps, was still using “Gulf of Mexico” earlier Tuesday but by early evening had changed to “Gulf of America” on some browsers, though at least one search produced results for both.

Trump also decreed that the mountain in Alaska known as Mount McKinley and then by its Indigenous name, Denali, be shifted back to commemorating the 25th president. President Barack Obama had ordered it renamed Denali in 2015. AP said last month it will use the official name change to Mount McKinley because the area lies solely in the United States and Trump has the authority to change federal geographical names within the country.

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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

Republican efforts to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from numbers used to divvy up congressional seats among states have begun anew, with four Republican state attorneys general suing to alter the once-a-decade head count even before President Donald Trump’s second term in office began Monday.

Trump joined in the battle immediately upon returning to office, signing an executive order on Monday that rescinded a Biden administration order and signaled the possibility of a push by his new administration to change the 2030 census. Those efforts may get a boost from the GOP-controlled Congress, where Republican U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards from North Carolina earlier this month re-introduced legislation that would put a citizenship question on the census form.

During his first term, Trump signed an order that would have excluded people in the U.S. illegally from being included in the 2020 census numbers used to allot congressional seats and Electoral College votes to each state. The GOP president also mandated in a second order the collection of citizenship data through administrative records. A Republican redistricting expert had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

Trump issued the memos after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked his earlier attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire. The high court said the administration’s justification for the question “seems to have been contrived.”

Both Trump orders were rescinded when President Joe Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures were released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation’s largest statistical agency.

“I think it’s an open question about how much energy the administration and Congress will try to bend the statistical system to its will,” historian Margo Anderson said about Trump’s second term. “Not because they wouldn’t like to, but because there are other parts of the national government that they are more interested in.”

The Fourteenth Amendment says that “the whole number of persons in each state” should be counted for the numbers used for apportionment, the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes among the states based on population. The numbers also guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in federal dollars to the states for roads, health care and other programs.

The lawsuit filed Friday by the GOP attorneys general of Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio and West Virginia seeks to exclude people in the country illegally or temporarily from the numbers used to apportion congressional seats. It claims that Ohio and West Virginia each unfairly lost a congressional seat and an electoral vote after the 2020 census because people in the U.S. illegally were included, and that each of the four states stands to lose a congressional seat and electoral vote after the 2030 census if that doesn’t change.

Projections released last month by Election Data Services don’t show those four states losing seats after the 2030 census. The projections instead say California, New York and Illinois — states with Democratic majorities — are likely to lose the most seats and electoral votes.

The Census Bureau on Tuesday didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Opponents of the citizenship question on the 2020 census said it discouraged participation by immigrants and residents who were in the country illegally, resulting in inaccurate figures. A Census Bureau simulation released in 2023 indicated that a significant number of noncitizens were missed in the count, which took place during the last year of the first Trump administration and at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Demographers and researchers expect the second Trump administration to change or reverse recent actions by the Biden administration related to U.S. statistical agencies. They include combining into a single question race and ethnicity questions that previously were asked separately on forms and adding a Middle Eastern and North African category.

Many experts also expect planned questions about sexual orientation and gender identity on the most comprehensive survey of American life to be on the chopping block. Some have concerns that Trump will politicize the Census Bureau with large numbers of political appointees, with little experience, as happened during his first term. The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” policy guidebook for a Republican presidential administration advocated putting “committed political appointees and like-minded career employees” in bureau positions so they could “execute a conservative agenda.”

“They could easily put in the same type of idiots they put in last time for political purposes,” said Andrew Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate School and University Center, who is an expert on the census. “I would assume that he will do what he tried to do before.”

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Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform X: @MikeSchneiderAP.

A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in a few short months, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the U.S.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, rebuffing TikTok’s challenge that the statute ran afoul of the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform.

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”

TikTok and ByteDance — another plaintiff in the lawsuit — are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term and whose Justice Department would have to enforce the law, said during the presidential campaign that he is now against a TikTok ban and would work to “save” the social media platform.

The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, culminated a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China.

The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.

However, a significant portion of the government’s information in the case has been redacted and hidden from the public as well as the two companies.

TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its attorneys have accurately pointed out that the U.S. hasn’t provided evidence to show that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or manipulated content for Beijing’s benefit in the U.S. They have also argued the law is predicated on future risks, which the Department of Justice has emphasized pointing in part to unspecified action it claims the two companies have taken in the past due to demands from the Chinese government.

Friday’s ruling came after the appeals court panel heard oral arguments in September.

Some legal experts said at the time that it was challenging to read the tea leaves on how the judges would rule.

In a court hearing that lasted more than two hours, the panel – composed of two Republican and one Democrat appointed judges – appeared to grapple with how TikTok’s foreign ownership affects its rights under the Constitution and how far the government could go to curtail potential influence from abroad on a foreign-owned platform.

The judges pressed Daniel Tenny, a Department of Justice attorney, on the implications the case could have on the First Amendment. But they also expressed some skepticism at TikTok’s arguments, challenging the company’s attorney – Andrew Pincus – on whether any First Amendment rights preclude the government from curtailing a powerful company subject to the laws and influence of a foreign adversary.

In parts of their questions about TikTok’s ownership, the judges cited wartime precedent that allows the U.S. to restrict foreign ownership of broadcast licenses and asked if the arguments presented by TikTok would apply if the U.S. was engaged in war.

To assuage concerns about the company’s owners, TikTok says it has invested more than $2 billion to bolster protections around U.S. user data.

The company also argues the government’s broader concerns could have been resolved in a draft agreement it provided the Biden administration more than two years ago during talks between the two sides. It has blamed the government for walking away from further negotiations on the agreement, which the Justice Department argues is insufficient.

Attorneys for the two companies have claimed it’s impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically. They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm – the platform’s secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan – would turn the U.S. version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content.

Still, some investors, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire Frank McCourt, have expressed interest in purchasing the platform. Both men said earlier this year that they were launching a consortium to purchase TikTok’s U.S. business.

This week, a spokesperson for McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative, which aims to protect online privacy, said unnamed participants in their bid have made informal commitments of more than $20 billion in capital.

TikTok’s lawsuit was consolidated with a second legal challenge brought by several content creators — for which the company is covering legal costs — as well as a third one filed on behalf of conservative creators who work with a nonprofit called BASED Politics Inc.

If TikTok appeals and the courts continue to uphold the law, it would fall on Trump’s Justice Department to enforce it and punish any potential violations with fines. The penalties would apply to app stores that would be prohibited from offering TikTok, and internet hosting services that would be barred from supporting it.

WASHINGTON — Republicans will control the White House and both houses of Congress come January. But President-elect Donald Trump’s intent to nominate loyalists to fill key Cabinet posts has set up a possible confrontation with the Senate, which has the constitutional responsibility for “advice and consent” on presidential nominees.

Trump and his Republican allies are talking about going around the Senate and using temporary recess appointments, which last no more than two years.

Invoking that authority could result in a fight that lands at the Supreme Court. Trump might also have to claim another, never-before-used power to force the Senate into a recess, if it won’t agree to one.

In its 234 years, the Supreme Court has decided only one case involving recess appointments. In 2014, the justices unanimously ruled that Democratic President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were illegal.

But they disagreed sharply over the reach of the decision. Five justices backed a limited ruling that held the Senate wasn’t actually in recess when Obama acted and, in any event, a break had to be at least 10 days before the president could act on his own.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the other four justices, would have held that the only recess recognized by the Constitution occurs between the annual sessions of Congress, not breaks taken during a session. That would have ruled out the appointments Trump may be considering after the new Congress begins in January and he is sworn into office.

Just two justices, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, remain from the five-justice bloc that took the view that preserved the president’s power to make recess appointments during a session of Congress. Three others, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, joined the Scalia opinion that would have made it virtually impossible for any future president to make recess appointments.

The rest of the court has become more conservative since then, a result of Trump’s three high court appointments in his first term. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have no record on this issue, which rarely arises in the courts. Nor does Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a 2022 appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden.

A more conservative Supreme Court might come out differently today, though it’s by no means certain. Once the court decides a case, the ruling is regarded as precedent that is not lightly discarded. So even some justices who initially dissent from a ruling will go along in later cases on a similar topic.

Scalia, an icon of the right, applied his originalist approach to the Constitution to conclude that there was little doubt what the framers were trying to do.

The whole point of the constitutional provision on recess appointments, adopted in 1787 in the era of horse and buggy, was that the Senate could not quickly be summoned to fill critical vacancies, he wrote.

Reading a summary of his opinion aloud in the courtroom on June 26, 2014, Scalia said the power to make recess appointments “is an anachronism.”

The Senate always can be convened on short notice to consider a president’s nominations, he said.

“The only remaining practical use for the recess appointment power is the ignoble one of enabling presidents to circumvent the Senate’s role in the appointment process, which is precisely what happened here,” Scalia said.

It’s not likely to happen quickly. Only someone who has been affected by an action taken by an official who was given a recess appointment would have the legal right, or standing, to sue. In the NLRB case, Obama made his recess appointments in January 2012.

The board then ruled against Noel Canning, a soft drink bottling company in Yakima, Washington, in a dispute over contract negotiations with a local Teamsters union. The company sued, claiming that the NLRB decision against it was not valid because the board members were not properly appointed and that the board did not have enough members to do business without the improperly appointed officials.

The Supreme Court’s ultimate decision came nearly 2 1/2 years later.

Among the most prominent people who were first given recess appointments and later confirmed by the Senate are Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice William Brennan and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Among those who left office after failing to win a Senate vote is John Bolton, who was given a recess appointment as U.N. ambassador under Republican President George W. Bush.

A separate novel legal issue could arise if Trump were to invoke a constitutional provision that his allies suggested would allow him to force the Senate to adjourn, even if doesn’t want to, and enable him to make recess appointments.

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution includes a clause about congressional adjournments that has never been invoked. Trump’s allies read it as giving the chief executive the power step in when the House and Senate can’t agree on when to adjourn. The provision reads that “in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper.”

But some scholars, including conservative ones, argue that the House has no power to force the Senate to adjourn, and vice versa. Congressional adjournments are spelled out in Article I, which requires one chamber to consent when the other wants to take a break of more than three days. Under this view, the president could intervene only when one house objects to the other’s adjournment plan.