Election Highlights: Signs of Change Under Trump Start to Emerge

Frustrations around the economy created an opening for Mr. Trump, who capitalized on voters’ dim view of the economy there.

“If Kamala gets four more years, she will obliterate our economy, kill millions of jobs — kill thousands of people, too, by the way — and destroy your family finances probably forever,” Mr. Trump told a crowd in Las Vegas last month.

President Biden won Nevada by about 2.5 points in 2020, capitalizing on the powerful organizational advantage that Democrats have long enjoyed in the state. But recent changes in how Nevadans received ballots and the huge growth of nonpartisan voters made it hard for the campaigns to handicap the race. George W. Bush was the last Republican presidential candidate to win Nevada, in 2004.

In a reversal of past habits, registered Republicans flocked to the polls to vote early, handing in ballots at a far higher rate than Democrats, who were able to eat into those gains somewhat through their dominance in returning mail ballots.

About $81 million was spent on advertising in the state, according to AdImpact, a tracking firm. Ms. Harris’s campaign and allied groups spent about twice as much as Mr. Trump’s campaign and groups supporting him.

Even so, polling in Nevada remained tight until the end, with The New York Times’s polling average showing the race tied in the state.

Mr. Trump’s campaign focused intently on turning out younger male voters and trying to chip away at the Democrats’ typical success with Latino voters, who make up 20 percent of Nevada’s registered voters.

He was the first of the two candidates to say he would eliminate taxes on tips — a popular stance in a state with an economy that hinges on tourism.

Several of her fellow Democratic incumbents, like Senator Jon Tester of Montana, were ousted; Ms. Rosen will head back to Washington for her second term now in the minority. President-elect Donald J. Trump has won all six of the presidential battlegrounds that have so far been called — including Nevada, which went red for the first time since 2004 — while flashing strength in traditionally blue strongholds.

“Thank you, Nevada!” Ms. Rosen posted on X after the race was called. “I’m honored and grateful to continue serving as your United States Senator.”

In a statement on Saturday, Mr. Brown said: “This is not a conclusion, but the beginning of a renewed fight for our values and our nation’s greatness. Thank you for believing in this vision for Nevada and for America. I’ve got you, always.”

Ms. Rosen, a former computer programmer and synagogue president, was seen as vulnerable, given Nevada’s swing state status. A political newcomer when she was asked by Senator Harry M. Reid, the influential Democrat who died in 2021, to run for office, Ms. Rosen cut a low profile as she cultivated a bipartisan, pragmatic image. That made it difficult for opponents to attack her, but also presented a challenge to Ms. Rosen’s efforts to define herself apart from a deeply unpopular Biden administration, especially to an electorate that is more transient than that of other states.

Republicans thought that made Ms. Rosen’s seat attainable as they worked to tie her to President Biden, and later to Vice President Kamala Harris. Lacking a deep bench of experienced politicians in Nevada, they turned to Mr. Brown, who has never held elected office but had a captivating personal narrative. He was nearly killed in Afghanistan in 2008 when his vehicle ran over a roadside bomb, and was left permanently scarred after undergoing more than 30 surgeries during a three-year recovery.

Mr. Brown lapped the rest of the Republican field in the primary, but he quickly fell behind against Ms. Rosen, who was better-funded. She bombarded him on the airwaves with advertisements highlighting his past comments opposing abortion, an issue on which he tried to moderate.

Mr. Brown, a relative newcomer to Nevada, struggled to gain traction and raise his profile, and surveys showed him trailing, sometimes by significant margins, throughout the fall. A televised debate in mid-October did little to change the trajectory of the race.

Still, Republicans had hoped that the presidential race would help Mr. Brown — and it did. Mr. Trump was competitive against Ms. Harris in polls there, and he gained momentum among Latino voters this year. The state’s tourist-driven economy recovered more slowly than most from the doldrums of the coronavirus pandemic, and Mr. Brown’s campaign suggested Ms. Rosen was to blame.

Ultimately, it was not enough. Democrats have long had an established ground game advantage in Nevada, fueled by prominent labor groups like the Culinary Workers Union, and Ms. Rosen was able to secure a tight victory.

In brief, clipped remarks, he said he intended to shut down the open-air fentanyl markets that had proliferated in the city’s Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods and had infuriated many residents.

“We are going to get tough on those that are dealing drugs, and we are going to be compassionate, but tough, about the conditions of our streets, as well,” Mr. Lurie, 47, said at a gathering in Chinatown that lasted just a few minutes.

Fentanyl, a cheap opioid, is responsible for most of the 3,300 drug deaths that have occurred in San Francisco since 2020, killing far more people in the city than Covid-19, homicides and car crashes combined.

Mr. Lurie, a 47-year-old heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who has never held elected office, appealed to an electorate that was tired of rampant drug use and property crime in the city and was looking for a mayor who could revitalize the struggling downtown area. He was effective in getting his message out to voters, spending $8.6 million of his own money on his campaign and receiving another $1 million from his mother, the billionaire Mimi Haas.

Mr. Lurie, a Democrat, addressed reporters the morning after Mayor London Breed, also a Democrat, called him to concede. He did not provide additional details about what his emergency declaration would do.

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San Francisco Mayor-Elect Wants to Declare a ‘Fentanyl State of Emergency’

Daniel Lurie, San Francisco’s mayor-elect and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, expressed his commitment to fighting crime and drugs in the city.

Listen, my No. 1 priority is public safety for the citizens and the residents and the taxpayers of our city. I put out a plan: We are going to declare a fentanyl state of emergency on Day 1 of our administration. We are going to get tough on those that are dealing drugs and we are going to be compassionate, but tough about the conditions of our streets as well. We’re going to get people the help that they need: more mental health and drug treatment beds. We’re going to work with state, federal and city law enforcement to make sure that we close these open-air drug markets. On Day 1, I’m going to put all of my holdings, all of my holdings into a blind trust. I have to talk to the city attorney about salary. I don’t anticipate taking one, but I have to talk to him about that.

Any mayor seeking to declare an emergency must get approval from the city attorney. Traditionally, such orders are used after sudden, unforeseen events, such as major earthquakes and the Covid-19 pandemic, to bypass bureaucratic rules and quickly spend money or hire staff.

Ms. Breed in 2021 declared an emergency in the Tenderloin and used it to quickly establish a service center for people addicted to drugs. But she ended the effort after facing criticism for allowing individuals to use a patio to smoke fentanyl under supervision.

Mr. Lurie vowed during his campaign to build 1,500 new shelter beds in his first six months in office, make drug treatment available to anyone who wants it and use ankle monitors to track first-time drug dealers.

He also said he would allow individuals detained for using drugs in public to choose between treatment or jail.

Mr. Lurie said on Friday that he would place his assets into a blind trust and forgo taking a $383,000 salary.

Mr. Lurie was asked repeatedly on Friday about how he would stand up to President-elect Donald J. Trump when it comes to protecting transgender people, gay people and immigrants. He said he would “have their backs” but that his focus would be on running the city.

Breaking with San Francisco political tradition, Mr. Lurie began his remarks right on time and ended them minutes later, with some guests arriving late, only to find the event was already over. That included Larry Baer, the president of the San Francisco Giants, who caught up with Mr. Lurie to ask him to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day.

Mr. Lurie darted around Chinatown, greeting merchants over the course of many blocks after focusing much of his campaign outreach on Chinese American voters. Shop owners thrust bouquets and melons at him in congratulations.

About 40 minutes after the event started, it was over. Mr. Lurie was whisked off in a city-issued black Chevrolet Tahoe S.U.V. for the first time.

His opponent in the City Council’s 14th District, Ysabel Jurado, declared victory in the race on Thursday night. Ballots were still being tallied in Los Angeles County, but the latest count showed Ms. Jurado, a tenant rights lawyer, ahead by more than 12 percentage points.

Mr. de León conceded on Friday and congratulated Ms. Jurado in a statement.

“While the results of this election did not go our way, I respect the decision of the voters and our democratic process,” Mr. de León said. He thanked his supporters “who stood by me with unwavering dedication.”

He has served only one term on the City Council, but he was among the most powerful politicians in California years before. He rose in the state Legislature to become the leader of the California State Senate, where he wielded control over bills in Sacramento for nearly four years. He also mounted a serious, but unsuccessful, challenge to Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2018.

He resisted overwhelming calls for his resignation in 2022 after the release of a secretly recorded tape that captured his involvement in a conversation with fellow local Latino political leaders that was rife with racist and offensive remarks. Nury Martinez, the president of the City Council, swiftly resigned after she was identified in the recording. Gil Cedillo, another council member captured on the recording, lost his re-election bid in the primary months before the tapes were released, and he has not run for another office.

But a defiant Mr. de León held on. He survived attempts to qualify a recall against him and insisted that voters in his East Los Angeles district valued his advocacy for their neighborhoods and Latino rights.

Mr. Trump spoke on Wednesday with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said in a statement that the two had “agreed to maintain close dialogue and advance our cooperation.” At some point, according to a person familiar with the call, Mr. Trump handed the phone to Elon Musk, a billionaire whose Starlink satellite network has played an integral role in Ukraine’s communications during its war against Russian invaders.

Mr. Trump has promised a swift end to that war, a position seen as amenable to allowing Russia to keep the territory seized since the start of its full-scale invasion in 2022. A Trump spokesman did not immediately provide a comment about the call.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel

Mr. Trump and the Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, agreed in a call on Wednesday “to work together for Israel’s security, and also discussed the Iranian threat,” according to a statement from the prime minister’s office that described the call as “warm and cordial.”

Mr. Trump’s election has undercut pressure for progress on cease-fire talks related to Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza and its battle with Hezbollah in Lebanon. While the Biden administration has pushed Israel to make a deal, experts say Mr. Netanyahu is unlikely to cede anything in the U.S. administration’s waning months.

President Emmanuel Macron of France

French news outlets reported that the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, spoke with Mr. Trump for nearly half an hour on Wednesday about Europe’s role on the global stage. Mr. Macron was one of the first European leaders to congratulate Mr. Trump on his election, saying in a statement that he was “ready to work together as we did for four years.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada

Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, spoke with Mr. Trump on Wednesday, according to a statement from Mr. Trudeau’s office. They discussed several topics, including the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal, North American security and shared interests in “reliable supply chains and addressing unfair trading practices in the global economy.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, said in a statement on Wednesday that he “had a great conversation with my friend,” referring to Mr. Trump. Mr. Modi said he looked forward to working on “India-US relations across technology, defense, energy, space and several other sectors.”

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia

The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, called Mr. Trump on Wednesday and congratulated him on his win, Saudi state media reported.

Many Persian Gulf leaders see Mr. Trump as a business ally.

President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea

The South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, spoke with Mr. Trump for 12 minutes on Thursday, according to Tim Tae-hyo, the president’s deputy national security adviser. He said that the leaders discussed military cooperation among the United States, South Korea and Japan and spoke of the North Korean troops fighting with the Russians against Ukraine. The two agreed to meet in person, he said.

Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting.

Pennsylvania’s Senate race

Dave McCormick, the Republican candidate, has a slim advantage in the tally so far and has claimed victory, but the Democratic incumbent, Senator Bob Casey, has not conceded. The New York Times has not called the race.

The candidates remain about 39,000 votes apart, a difference of just more than half a percentage point. On Thursday, the state reported that some 100,000 provisional, military, overseas and Election Day ballots were still uncounted. That included around 33,000 provisional ballots in the state’s largest counties, Philadelphia and Allegheny, which includes Pittsburgh.

Counting the remaining ballots could stretch into next week, local officials said. If the margin winds up within half a percentage point, the race could go to a recount.

Arizona’s Senate race

Most voters cast ballots by mail in Arizona, and by Friday there were still more than 700,000 ballots remaining to be counted, according to the secretary of state’s office. In the Senate race, the Democrat, Ruben Gallego, was ahead of the Republican, Kari Lake, by nearly 41,000 votes in the tally so far.

The bulk of the votes remaining to be counted are in Maricopa and Pima Counties, which contain Phoenix and Tucson and tend to lean more Democratic. The later-arriving mail ballots in Maricopa, however, have been leaning more Republican.

Nevada’s Senate race

Tens of thousands of mail-in ballots remain to be tallied, mostly in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, and Washoe County, which includes Reno.

Those votes will most likely lean Democratic, suggesting that the one-point advantage that Jacky Rosen, the incumbent Democrat, currently holds over Sam Brown, her Republican challenger, is likely to grow.

At this point, most rural counties have finished counting the mail-in ballots they have received. Postmarked ballots are allowed to arrive until Saturday, though the remaining numbers are expected to be small, and voters have until Tuesday to fix any identification issues with their ballots.

House races

The House remains up for grabs, though Republicans need only seven more seats for a majority. Twenty-five seats have not been decided for either party. Of those, 10 are in California and four are in Arizona, where counting will continue into next week.

• Nick Begich, a Republican, is ahead in the vote tally in the Alaska at-large race, which was flipped by Representative Mary Peltola two years ago. But the state is still accepting absentee ballots that were mailed by Election Day. Carol Beecher, a state elections official, said Alaska would post results from the bulk of uncounted votes in this race on Tuesday.

• In Maine’s Second Congressional District, Representative Jared Golden, a Democrat, is leading Austin Theriault, his Republican challenger, by fewer than 2,000 votes. But because the race is so close, the state’s ranked-choice voting — which allows voters to select multiple candidates in order of preference — comes into play. If a voter’s first choice was a write-in candidate or was left blank, that vote will now be reallocated to Mr. Golden or Mr. Theriault if either was the voter's second choice. The process will take some time.

• Marcy Kaptur, the Democratic incumbent in Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District, holds a small lead over the Republican, Derek Merrin — around 1,000 votes, as of results from Wednesday — but there are still thousands of provisional ballots that must be reviewed and counted.

• Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is ahead in the vote count in Washington’s Third Congressional District, a seat she flipped for Democrats in 2022. But while her advantage stood at 11,000 votes, there were a significant number of votes remaining to be counted — an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 ballots, as of late Thursday, not counting ballots postmarked before the election that have yet to arrive. The vast majority of the uncounted votes are in Clark County, where Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez leads.

• California, where 10 races remain uncalled, will count all ballots postmarked by Election Day as long as they arrive by Tuesday, so the count won’t be complete until then at the earliest. And some counties won’t post updated results at all until Tuesday, because of the Veterans Day holiday.

• Election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county, said before the election that they expected counting to take at least a week. And Pima County officials said this year’s two-page ballot has slowed down tabulation and made it harder to estimate when they might finish. That leaves several competitive congressional races hanging in the balance, as well as the state’s Senate race and presidential contest.

Jacob Meschke contributed reporting.

“The other side spent a lot of time campaigning and talking about and promising that they would leave things up to the states,” Walz said, referring to President-elect Donald J. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance. “I’m willing to take them at their word for that. But the moment they try and bring a hateful agenda to this state, I’m going to stand ready to stand up and fight.”

In his remarks, Mr. Walz appeared to offer Minnesota as a liberal escape from conservative policies — on abortion, immigration, guns and climate change. “Minnesota always has and always will be there to provide shelter from the storm,” he said.

“As long as I’m governor of Minnesota,” Mr. Walz went on, “we’ll be a state that respects democracy, a place where we’re proud of our civic debate and where we don’t demonize people who disagree with us.”

Even as he repudiated aspects of Mr. Trump’s expected agenda, Mr. Walz also addressed the president-elect’s supporters in Minnesota and across the United States, saying that “there should be a place in our politics for everyone to be heard.”

“I think we ought to swallow — and this is me in this, as I’m speaking about myself — swallow a little bit of pride and look a little harder to find common ground with our neighbors who didn’t vote like we did in this election,” Mr. Walz said, adding, “Maybe when we get a little break from this campaign that we were in, we’ll be able to look at each other and see not enemies, but neighbors.”

People working on the transition have already prepared a slate of executive orders and presidential proclamations on climate and energy. They include withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, eliminating every office in every agency working to end the pollution that disproportionately affects poor communities and shrinking the size of national monuments in the West to allow more drilling and mining on public lands.

President Biden has made environmental justice a top priority and has sought to ensure that underserved communities benefit from at least 40 percent of clean energy development. That initiative will be scrapped, people familiar with the plan said. The move will be part of a greater effort to dismantle what Mr. Trump’s allies view as the “woke” agenda and any programs that do not help improve the economy.

The boundaries of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah will be immediately redrawn to reflect changes that Mr. Trump made in 2017, when he opened hundreds of thousands of acres of land considered sacred to several Native tribes to mining and other development. Mr. Biden expanded the protected areas in 2021.

Mr. Trump is also expected to move swiftly to end the Biden administration’s pause on permitting new natural gas export terminals, and to revoke a longstanding waiver that allows California and other states to set tighter pollution standards than the federal government.

Mr. Trump also intends to install an “energy czar” in the White House to coordinate policies across agencies in an effort to cut regulations and make it easier to ramp up production of oil, gas and coal.

Some people on the transition team are discussing moving the E.P.A. headquarters and its 7,000 workers out of Washington, D.C., according to multiple people involved in the discussions who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to talk about the transition.

The “energy czar” job description is reminiscent of the White House Energy Task Force overseen by Vice President Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration, aimed at ensuring that fossil fuels would remain the United States’ primary energy resources for “years down the road” and that the federal government’s energy strategy would mainly aim to increase supply of fossil fuels, rather than limit demand.

At the United Nations climate talks last year, the United States and nearly every other country agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, the burning of which is driving climate change.

One possible candidate for the role of energy czar is Gov. Doug Burgum, Republican of North Dakota, who briefly ran for his party’s nomination for president last year before dropping out to endorse Mr. Trump.

Governor Burgum emerged as a key adviser on energy issues to Mr. Trump’s campaign, acting as a liaison between Mr. Trump and the oil billionaires who helped to fund his presidential bid.

Another potential candidate is Dan Brouillette, a former automobile industry lobbyist who served as energy secretary in the first Trump administration.

A spokeswoman for the transition team, Karoline Leavitt, declined to confirm those moves. “President-Elect Trump will begin making decisions on who will serve in his second administration soon,” she said in an email. “Those decisions will be announced when they are made.”

An energy and environment transition team with experience from previous Republican administrations — as well as on Capitol Hill, at lobbying firms and in private business — stands in contrast to the chaos of the first Trump administration’s transition. Eight years ago, some on Mr. Trump’s “beachhead” teams lacked a basic understanding of the underlying statutes that guide the agencies charged with protecting the air, water, land and climate.

Those teams made hasty attempts to erase environmental rules that did not stand up to legal challenges. Later in Mr. Trump’s term, Mr. Bernhardt and Mr. Wheeler, who had both served in their respective agencies in previous Republican administrations, stepped in to ensure that environmental rollbacks were executed with more legal care.

The model for this transition is President Biden, Mr. Trump’s allies said. On the first day of the Biden administration, hundreds of staff members were hired and in place to focus on climate change. The Trump team aims to do the reverse.

“They have the model of what Biden did the first day, the first week, the first month,” said Myron Ebell, who led the transition of the E.P.A. under Mr. Trump’s first term. “We’ll look at what Biden did and put a ‘not’ in front of it.”

Mr. Bernhardt is playing a leading role. He is working on a broad range of issues including energy, public land use and environmental policy, said the people knowledgeable about the transition.

As it did during the first Trump administration, the Interior Department, which oversees 500 million acres of public lands, will be central to Mr. Trump’s vision of unleashing a new era of unfettered oil, gas and coal production.

During his time in the first Trump administration, Mr. Bernhardt helped open more than 10 million acres of public lands to fossil fuel extraction and stripped away protections for endangered species.

Mr. Bernhardt serves as the chairman of the Center for American Freedom at the America First Policy Institute, an organization that has spent the last two years crafting policy plans for the next Republican administration. Mr. Trump has suggested that Mr. Bernhardt would be welcomed back to his administration in almost any role he would like, whether at the Interior Department or the White House.

Mr. Bernhardt and the America First Policy Institute did not respond to requests for comment.

Others who are being considered to head the Interior Department in the second Trump administration are Adam Paul Laxalt, the former attorney general of Nevada; Senator Mike Lee of Utah; Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming; and Kate MacGregor, who served as the deputy interior secretary in the first term.

The E.P.A. transition includes Mr. Wheeler, who is considered a top choice to lead the agency again. It also includes Anne Austin, who served as the agency’s regional administrator in Texas as well as a deputy in its air office, and Carla Sands, who served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Denmark and is now a top energy official at the America First Policy Institute.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Wheeler dismantled rules to cut fossil fuel pollution from power plants, automobiles and oil and gas wells, essentially ensuring that billions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions would continue to heat the atmosphere. The Biden administration restored and expanded those rules.

Mr. Wheeler did not respond to a request for comment.

According to people involved in the talks, the transition team is particularly eager to move forward with Mr. Trump’s vision of relocating tens of thousands of federal employees, starting at the E.P.A. Those discussions are in early stages, the people involved said.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, the administration moved the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to Colorado and two scientific research arms of the Department of Agriculture to Kansas, resulting in an exodus of employees.

“Just as I moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, as many as 100,000 government positions could be moved out — and I mean immediately — out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America,” Mr. Trump said in a video on his campaign website.

“This is how I will shatter the deep state,” he said.

Joyce Howell, an E.P.A. attorney in Philadelphia and the executive vice president of the AFGE Council 238 representing agency employees, said that most E.P.A. staff already work outside of Washington. The E.P.A. has ten regional offices and dozens of small facilities and labs throughout the United States.

“I don’t know what they think they’re going to accomplish by moving E.P.A. headquarters other than disruption,” Ms. Howell said. “The patriots who love America are also in Washington, D.C. You can’t find another group of people more dedicated to protecting public health and the environment.”

Ms. Wiles, 67, guided Mr. Trump to a likely sweep of all seven battleground states and a popular vote victory.

Here is what to know about her:

She may have staying power that Trump’s other chiefs of staff did not.

Ms. Wiles has shown an unusual durability for a Trump confidante, lasting the entire election cycle as a campaign manager along with Chris LaCivita.

Taking orders from a boss who famously told contestants “You’re fired” on “The Apprentice,” a line Mr. Trump incorporated into his campaign speeches, does not do wonders for job security. Just ask the four chiefs of staff whom Mr. Trump churned through during his first term as president — or some of the banished managers of his previous campaigns.

But Ms. Wiles has cultivated trust among Mr. Trump’s family members and, most important, with the former president, who is known for giving into his impulses.

Wiles avoids the spotlight (and Trump calls her ‘the ice maiden’).

During Mr. Trump’s victory gathering in West Palm Beach, Fla., on election night, as he was on the cusp of winning 270 electoral votes, he summoned Ms. Wiles and Mr. LaCivita to the microphone, congratulating the architects of his campaign.

Ms. Wiles demurred, keeping with a reputation for shying away from the spotlight.

“Susie likes to stay sort of in the back,” Mr. Trump said. “The ice maiden. We call her the ice maiden.”

Ms. Wiles speaks sparingly in public. When Mr. Trump was looking for a member of his inner circle to be a surrogate for him on conservative television in the late stages of the campaign, Ms. Wiles appeared to take another pass. Corey Lewandowski, whom Mr. Trump brought back as an adviser after firing him from his 2016 campaign, filled that role.

She has a thick political résumé.

For more than four decades, the rough-and-tumble nature of politics has been a way of life for Ms. Wiles, who worked on the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In the Florida governor’s race in 2010, she helped lead the campaign of Rick Scott, a businessman who harnessed support from the Tea Party movement for a narrow victory in what was then a battleground that had started to lean Republican. (Mr. Scott now serves in the Senate.)

“If you don’t know her, you soon will, but @susie57 will go down as one of the greatest campaign strategists,” Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, wrote on X after Mr. Trump’s victory this week. “To the democrats detriment she has been a part of all the winning campaigns in Florida.”

Ms. Wiles was key to DeSantis’s political rise.

Ms. Wiles once plied her political skills for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, leading his political operation and plotting his path to national prominence before he banished her from his orbit and questioned her loyalty.

Ms. Wiles got her revenge.

Mr. DeSantis tried to chart his own course to the presidency during the 2024 election cycle, attempting to run to the right of Mr. Trump but struggling to gain traction during the Republican primary. He dropped out of the race just days before the New Hampshire G.O.P. primary and endorsed Mr. Trump.

Her father was an icon of the N.F.L.

Ms. Wiles’s late father was Pat Summerall, the famed N.F.L. broadcast partner of John Madden and a former kicker for three teams. He was a teammate of Jack Kemp, who served in Congress and was the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1996. Ms. Wiles took an early job as an aide to Mr. Kemp.

Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader who has prioritized judicial confirmations, on Friday indicated a willingness to devote significant Senate floor time to seating more judges in the post-election session that begins next week. About 30 nominees were already in the confirmation pipeline, and Mr. Biden announced two more on Friday night.

“We are going to get as many done as we can,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement.

Progressive groups have ramped up the pressure for them to do so.

“The reality is that we now have a rapidly closing window to confirm well-qualified, fair-minded judges who will protect our rights and serve as one of the last guardrails in upholding our nation’s laws and the Constitution,” Maggie Jo Buchanan, the managing director of the progressive group Demand Justice, said in a statement this week. “Even one judge can make a difference.”

With the clock ticking, some liberal activists are even agitating for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who at 70 is the senior Democratic-nominated member of the Supreme Court, to step aside and allow Democrats to rush through her replacement. That would be reminiscent of what Republicans did in 2020, when they moved quickly after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to speed through Mr. Trump’s nominee to replace her, Amy Coney Barrett, in the weeks before the election. But there is no indication that Justice Sotomayor would leave the court, and no guarantee that Democrats could succeed in swiftly replacing her if she did.

Before senators left town in September for this year’s election, they confirmed the 213th judge of Mr. Biden’s tenure. But Democrats could confront logistical problems if they try to move forward rapidly with dozens more. They will meet next week to plot their strategy for the final weeks of the Congress, including whether they can succeed in installing a significant number of judges.

Republicans are unlikely to cooperate because they want to hold open as many seats as possible for Mr. Trump to fill. That means Democrats will need every vote they can muster to push through nominees on party-line votes. That may include Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, independents who are departing but typically voted with Democrats on judicial picks. Mr. Manchin has declared he will not vote for judicial nominees who do not have at least nominal Republican support, though he did make an exception recently.

After their losses, some Democratic senators might also want to wrap up remaining business quickly and move on from Washington as the holidays approach, presenting Mr. Schumer with attendance problems. Some Republican senators are likely to be absent as well, including Vice President-elect JD Vance of Ohio and Mike Braun of Indiana, who was elected governor.

Complicating matters further, not all of the pending nominees have unanimous Democratic support, meaning Democrats and the White House might have to sacrifice some who do not have the necessary backing.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who has overseen the confirmation push, wants to approve as many as he can, according to his office.

“Senate Democrats are in a strong position regarding judicial confirmations as we approach the lame-duck session given that we have a number of nominees on the floor ready for a vote, and others still moving through committee,” a spokesperson for Mr. Durbin said. “Chair Durbin aims to confirm every possible nominee before the end of this Congress.”

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, acknowledged this week that Democrats had the power to focus on judges if they decided to do so. But he also alluded to the fact that the process can be time-consuming, potentially crowding out legislative business.

“The advantage of being the majority leader is you can decide what to bring up,” Mr. McConnell said. “If that’s what the majority leader wants to do, that’s what we will do, and each one will be voted on.”

In the past, the two parties have sometimes struck agreements on consensus nominees at the close of a Congress, approving a number of them in single package. But Mr. McConnell’s remark hinted at the likelihood that with heightened partisanship over nominees and Republicans about to take over, a deal to confirm several judges at once might be hard to come by.

In Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. McConnell and Donald F. McGahn II, then the White House counsel, made judicial confirmations a top priority as they sought to place scores of conservative-leaning nominees on the nation’s district and appeals courts as well as the Supreme Court, moving them distinctly to the right.

When Democrats took over in 2021, they sought to reduce the influence of the Trump administration conservatives, recognizing that the courts rather than Congress had been deciding some of the major cultural, economic and environmental fights of the moment. Mr. Biden’s nominees were remarkably diverse in personal and professional backgrounds relative to traditional federal court nominees, and almost two-thirds of them were women.

Over the next four years, Mr. Trump could easily have the opportunity to add to the three justices he placed on the Supreme Court during his first term: Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Barrett. The three cemented the conservative majority on the court after Republicans blocked President Barack Obama from filling a vacancy in 2016.

Though Mr. McConnell is stepping down from leadership next year, judicial confirmations are likely to remain a top interest for the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Senate.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, 91, is in line to regain the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee after heading it up for past Supreme Court confirmation fights. One of the Republicans seeking to succeed Mr. McConnell as party leader is Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee who has been deeply involved in confirmation issues.

“As the nation enters a second Trump presidency there currently are 47 federal judicial vacancies, including five in Texas,” Mr. Cornyn noted on social media this week.