The Florida federal judge, who has delivered a series of Trump-friendly rulings, ruled that Attorney General Merrick Garland may release the portion of Smith’s report dealing with Trump’s effort to overturn his loss in the 2020 election when a previous order expires at the end of Monday.

Garland has said he will release the report unless an appeals court or the Supreme Court steps in. There was no immediate word on whether Trump or others were seeking such an order from a higher court.

Trump railed against the forthcoming report before even knowing its contents, predicting it will be little more than a smear from Smith.

Cannon ordered a Friday hearing to consider whether prosecutors can release a separate volume of Smith’s report related to Trump’s classified documents case, which she presided over. Garland has said he planned to hand that over to congressional leaders, but to keep it sealed from public view.

It’s not known if the Jan. 6 report may include any significant new information about Trump’s failed scheme to stay in power after losing to President Biden.

Before Trump won reelection, Smith was seeking to continue a narrower prosecution of Trump in the Jan. 6 case after the Supreme Court granted Trump significant criminal immunity for official acts taken while serving in the White House.

Smith later dropped the indictments against Trump in the Jan. 6 case and the separate charges against him for improperly taking classified documents when he left the White House in 2021, bowing to DoJ policies barring prosecution of sitting presidents.

Smith resigned from his post as special counsel Friday after submitting one volume on each case.

Cannon had previously dismissed the classified documents case against Trump and two Mar-a-Lago employees on the grounds that Smith was improperly appointed. Smith dropped his appeal of that ruling when Trump won the November vote.

Despite having dismissed the case, Cannon surprised many legal observers last week when she blocked release of Smith’s report on the grounds it could compromise the rights of Trump’s co-defendants in the documents case.

Team Blue says suburban moderate Republicans showed how little leverage they have with Trump when they left the sit-down without a road map for either fully restoring the deduction or dramatically raising the $10,000 cap the GOP imposed as part of the 2017 Trump tax cuts.

“Unfair double taxation is hurting hard-working Long Islanders’ pockets,” Rep. Laura Gillen, a Nassau County Democrat, posted on X. “House Republicans must push for a full restoration of the SALT deduction. If they won’t, I’m happy to take their spot.”

Big Apple Republicans including Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of Staten Island, Long Island’s Rep. Nick LaLota and Westchester County Rep. Mike Lawler shot the breeze with Trump and won a thumbs up from the MAGA leader after a chummy meeting in balmy Palm Beach.

Even before it started, Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries discounted the meeting as an empty talk shop that would never lead to real results.

“These people aren’t serious,” he posted to X.

The GOP lawmakers sought to put a positive spin on the meeting, claiming they are making progress towards winning Trump’s support for the deduction, which is a huge issue for wealthy voters in pricey suburbs in New York, New Jersey and California.

“(Trump) is committed to helping Long Islanders, who suffer from the nation’s highest state & local taxes,” LaLota tweeted.

“We will get it done,” Lawler chimed in.

Malltiokis conceded that it’s unlikely fellow Republicans will agree to scrap the cap altogether. She admitted that Trump told them to hash out details on a possible increase with fellow Republians.

“He wants us to work on what would be a fair number.” the Staten Island lawmaker told Politico.

Trump and congressional Republicans are still seeking to come up with a broad plan for passing key portions of Trump’s agenda given the GOP’s tiny majority in the House and the fact they need to use a legislative slight of hand called reconciliation to get it past a potential Democratic filibuster in the Senate.

Extending the Trump tax cuts, which significantly cut rates for the wealthy and big business, is a key priority for almost all Republicans.

But some of the blue state GOP lawmakers say they won’t back any tax plan that does not eliminate or expand the SALT deduction cap.

Meanwhile, some Republican fiscal hawks bitterly oppose scrapping the SALT cap because it would increase the budget deficit. Others have said they won’t vote to eliminate the debt ceiling, an unrelated top goal for Trump, who wants a free hand to push for more spending as he sees fit.

With only a 219-215 Republican majority in the House, that signals big trouble for SALT and potentially the entire Trump plan. The narrow edge is expected to get even slimmer when two Republican members of congress join Trump’s cabinet.

Clapping back at critics, the once and future first lady said in an interview Monday that she is far more than President-elect Donald Trump’s wife; she’s also his trusted adviser.

“Some people — they see me as just the wife of the president, but I’m standing on my own two feet independent,” she said. “I have my own thoughts.”

She added: ”I don’t always agree with my husband is saying or doing. And that’s OK.”

The Slovenia-born former model says she has no qualms about giving her honest opinions to her husband — whether he likes it or not.

“I give him my advice, and sometimes he listens. Sometimes he doesn’t. And that’s OK.” she told “Fox and Friends.” Melania Trump made headlines during the recent presidential campaign by revealing that she supports abortion rights, a position that puts her at odds with the president-elect.

She said she will move to the White House soon and would split her time between Washington and Trump properties in Palm Beach and New York during her husband’s second four-year term.

And she appeared to pour cold water on reports that she would mostly stay in Manhattan, where teenage son Barron Trump is attending New York University.

“My first priority is, you know, to be a mom, to be a first lady, to be a wife,” she said. “And once we’re in on [Jan. 20], you serve the country.”

After having spent four years as first lady, she sounded confident about having a bigger role this time around. She vowed to expand her so-called Be Best initiative focusing on children and mental health challenges, which she suggested did not get enough backing in the first Trump term.

“Imagine what we could do in those years if they would rally behind me and teach the children what to do to protect them about social media and their mental health,” she said.

She is giving interviews ahead of her return to the White House and to promote her self-titled memoir.

Amazon recently agreed to pay an eye-popping $40 million for the rights to create a documentary with her involvement, which is due out this fall. The move is one of many appearing to be part of an effort by Big Tech to curry favor with President-elect Trump as he returns to power.

Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, have been prominent targets of Trump ire over the years. The mogul and Washington Post owner has sought to smooth things over with the company’s $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration fund.

During more than two hours of arguments, justices from across the political spectrum seemed skeptical of the social media company’s claim that a law banning the app — owned by Chinese-based ByteDance — would violate the free speech rights of the owners and TikTok’s 170 million American users.

“It doesn’t’ say, ‘TikTok, you can’t speak,'” liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said.

“The law doesn’t say TikTok has to shut down. It says ByteDance has to (sell TikTok),” conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, referring to the law’s Jan. 19 deadline for the Chinese company to sell the app’s American operation.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative appointed by President-elect Trump in his first term, sounded open to the government’s claim that the law was intended to prevent possible Chinese indoctrination of a generation of American youth.

“That seems like a huge concern for the future of the country,” said Kavanaugh, who has two teenage daughters.

The top court did not say when it might rule. But the law goes into effect a week from Sunday, the day before Trump is inaugurated, unless the Supreme Court blocks it.

Trump, who has no direct role in the case, nevertheless has asked the justices to put the law on hold until he can seek to broker a solution once he’s back in the White House.

Republicans and Democrats alike overwhelmingly backed the law that orders ByteDance to sell the American operation of the app, or shut it down. President Biden signed it into law, teeing up the current court fight.

TikTok lawyers called the law an unconstitutional effort to muzzle the app and its tens of millions of users. It says Congress has no right to effectively ban a platform that is widely used for political discussion and e-commerce.

A government lawyer defended the law as a narrowly tailored effort to prevent Communist-ruled China from continuing to have unfettered access to the phones and minds of Americans.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar stressed that the law doesn’t take any stance on the cute cat videos, glitzy cosmetics ads and political statements from all sides that are posted on TikTok.

“All of the same speech that’s happening on TikTok could (still) happen,” Prelogar said, adding, “All the act is doing is trying to surgically remove the ability of a foreign adversary nation to get our data and to be able to exercise control over the platform.”

She said a shutdown might not be permanent and noted that Congress may have anticipated that ByteDance would only take the edict to sell seriously once a shutdown takes effect, at least temporarily.

Now that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has decided not to block the report, Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to release it anytime after a three-day court-ordered grace period expires next week, unless the Supreme Court steps in.

The appeals court Thursday night quickly overruled an unusual decision to keep the report sealed by U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who has handed Trump a string of legal wins in the documents case.

Smith created the legally mandated report with one volume covering Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss and a separate one covering his probe of the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case after dropping the cases following Trump’s reelection in November.

Garland has the ultimate authority to decide whether to release Smith’s report and has repeatedly said he would do so, as he has done with other special counsel reports, like the separate one concerning the probe into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.

The Justice Department has said it does not plan to publicly release the volume of Smith’s report dealing with the classified documents case as long as the criminal case against two Trump co-defendants remains pending.

There could be more legal wrangling before Cannon or the Supreme Court if Trump or his co-defendants in the documents case appeal the 11th Circuit decision to the Supreme Court.

A Trump spokesperson said Smith’s report would be a “unconstitutional, one-sided, falsehood-ridden screed.”

“It is time for Joe Biden and Merrick Garland to do the right thing and put a final stop to the political weaponization of our Justice system,” spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement after the ruling.

The two-volume report is expected to detail findings and explain charging decisions in Smith’s two investigations, though the prospect for significant new information is unclear given the extensive details already disclosed in separate indictments against Trump.

Smith’s team abandoned both cases after Trump’s presidential election victory, citing Justice Department policy that prohibits the federal prosecutions of sitting presidents.

The election interference case was significantly narrowed by a Supreme Court ruling granting him significant immunity for official acts taken in office. The court ruled then for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, ending any realistic prospect Trump could be tried before the November election.

The case accusing Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate had already been dismissed in July by Cannon, who concluded that Smith’s appointment was illegal.

Smith’s appeal of the dismissal of charges against Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who were charged alongside Trump with obstructing the investigation, is still active. But Trump has vowed to end their prosecution once he returns to office Jan. 20.

The burly first-term lawmaker is expected to jet to Palm Beach over the weekend at Trump’s invitation, although Trump transition officials warned that the meeting was not set in stone.

“I’m the Senator for all Pennsylvanians — not just Democrats,” Fetterman said in a statement

He added that he doesn’t let party leaders tell him whom to meet or stances to take.

“No one is my gatekeeper. I will meet with and have a conversation with anyone if it helps me deliver for Pennsylvania and the nation,” Fetterman said.

Fetterman has said he is open to voting for several of Trump’s cabinet nominees including Pete Hegseth, the controversial appointee for Secretary of Defense.

Aides said the men will likely discuss Trump’s other cabinet nominees, an upcoming reconciliation package, and energy, a key issue in oil and coal-producing Pennsylvania.

Fetterman could be the first sitting Democratic lawmaker to meet with Trump since the November election put Trump on a glide path back to the White House.

Fetterman won election in 2022 by running as a progressive working class candidate, overcoming a stroke that he suffered on the eve of the Democratic primary that was a major issue in his campaign against TV doctor Mehmet Oz.

Despite their bitter rivalry, Fetterman says he has not decided whether to back Oz’s confirmation to a top health post in the Trump administration.

He has also emerged as a voice to the right of the Democratic leadership in Congress on issues like Israel and immigration.

Fetterman was one of the first Democrats to back the Republican-sponsored Laken Riley Act, which aims to crackdown on undocumented immigrants who commit relatively minor crimes.

As Carter’s beloved Bible hymns and country music rang out, President Biden and President-elect Trump joined former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at the extraordinary send-off at the Washington National Cathedral.

Carter died on Dec. 29 at age 100 after a long illness. Underlining the historic significance of the event, it was the first time since the 2018 funeral for ex-president George H.W. Bush that all the leaders met.

“Jimmy Carter taught me the strength of character is more than the title or the power we hold,” Biden said. “It’s the strength that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect.”

Biden paid tribute to his fellow Democratic president just 11 days before he leaves office at age 82.

“Keeping the faith with the best of humankind and the best of America is the story of Jimmy Carter’s life,” Biden added. “God bless Jimmy Carter.”

Trump, who has a fraught relationship with all his predecessors from both parties, gave only a chilly handshake to his ex-Vice President Mike Pence, the first time they have been in the same room since the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol during which the ex-president’s supporters chanted for Pence’s head.

Obama sat next to Trump and the two longtime political rivals chatted amiably as the dignitaries filed in for the service.

Biden and First Lady Jill Biden did not acknowledge Trump, who was accompanied by his wife, Melania Trump, on the way in to their front row seats.

Neither did Bush, Bill Clinton or his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost to Trump in his initial 2016 presidential race.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in the November election that paved the way for his White House comeback, likewise walked to her seat without acknowledging Trump.

All the former first and second ladies, along with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, attended except for Michelle Obama, who remained on an extended holiday vacation in Hawaii according to her office.

The funeral, part of a week of events mourning the ex-president ahead of his burial in tiny Plains, Georgia, was packed with pageantry, intrigue, pomp and ceremony, in notable juxtaposition with Carter’s homespun life.

Many of the same leaders and all the first ladies gathered at the funeral for ex-First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023 at 96.

The funeral for Jimmy Carter began in the morning as military service members carried his flag-draped casket down the east steps of the U.S. Capitol, where the former president had laid in state, to be driven to the cathedral.

On a sunny but frigid day, a 21-gun salute rang out to honor a no-frills man who famously despised rituals and felt most comfortable living a normal life.

Inside, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood performed John Lennon’s “Imagine” with a country twang.

Grandson Jason Carter said Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s modest ranch home epitomized their approach to life.

“It was like thousands of other grandparents’ houses across the South, with fishing trophies on the wall and a fridge plastered with photos of his grandkids,” Jason Carter said.

They ex-first couple had only a landline phone for decades and mistakenly called his grandson while trying to take a photo with his first cell phone.

“They were small-town people who never forgot who they were and where they were from,” Jason Carter said. “That love taught him to preach to power of human rights … and the power of democracy.”

Stu Eizenstat, a former White House aide, joked that the tireless Carter is most likely already drawing up a big to-do list in his new home.

“The Lord of all creation should be ready for Jimmy’s recommendations on how to make God’s realm a more peaceful place,” Eizenstat said.

Mourners also heard from 92-year-old former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who served as U.N. ambassador during the Carter administration.

“He may be gone, but he ain’t gone far,” said Young. The fellow Georgians from different sides of the racial divide both grew up in the era of Jim Crow segregation and lived to see the achievements of the civil rights movement.

Carter was a decorated Navy officer and nuclear engineer who became a farmer, state lawmaker and eventually governor in Georgia. He was little known nationally when he rose to power as a plainspoken outsider who vowed to bring honesty back to Washington after the Watergate scandal.

A Southerner and political moderate, he won a crowded 1976 Democratic presidential primary and ousted Ford, who had replaced President Richard Nixon after he resigned in disgrace.

Carter’s presidency was marred by economic dysfunction, soaring inflation and mostly setbacks on the international front.

He forged a historic peace between Israel and Egypt but presided over the humiliating capture of American hostages after the Islamic revolution in Iran.

Carter suffered the rare indignity of a powerful challenge from within his party mounted by Sen. Ted Kennedy and lost his reelection in a sweeping landslide to incoming President Ronald Reagan.

Unlike other past presidents, Carter returned to Plains after losing election without skipping a beat and started a post-presidency that many historians credit as the most impressive in history.

He launched The Carter Center, a non-governmental organization that promotes democracy and human rights across the globe, and worked with Habitat for Humanity to build thousands of homes for the needy in 14 countries.

In retirement, Carter also reprised his beloved role teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown, a position he sometimes claimed as his most worth of praise

As firefighters scrambled to stem the still-spreading infernos, Trump lashed out at Newsom for implementing a water management plan that many Republicans and farmers oppose.

“[Newsom] didn’t care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid,” Trump wrote on his social media site.

Trump falsely claimed Newsom’s plan restricted the amount of water firefighters had to fight at least four major blazes that have already killed at least two people in Los Angeles and destroyed more than 1,000 homes.

“He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!” Trump added.

Trump has sided with farmers over environmentalists in a long-running dispute over California’s scarce water resources. He backs allowing more water to flow from rain and melting snowpack into the state’s sprawling Sacramento River delta and south into the agricultural heartland of the state’s Central Valley.

The state’s water plan is designed in part to save endangered fish species including Chinook salmon and Delta smelt from extinction in the environmentally sensitive ecosystem. Trump mocked the Delta smelt conservation move as a quixotic effort to save “an essentially worthless fish.”

It’s not clear how Trump’s preferred water plan, or any state water-management strategy, could have mitigated the firestorm.

Experts blame the apocalyptic fires on months of bone-dry weather and the seasonal, Santa Ana winds reaching near-hurricane speeds. Climate scientists say global warming has exacerbated southern California’s arid conditions, laying the groundwork for more frequent and worse fires and other natural disasters.

Newsom did not immediately respond to Trump’s jabs, the latest flareup in their long-running political feud.

He thanked President Biden for quickly ordering federal emergency aid to the state and local authorities as they seek to get a handle on the uncontained fires.

“It’s impossible for me to express the level of appreciation for the cooperation we’ve received from the White House,” Newsom said at an afternoon briefing with Biden and fire officials in Santa Monica.

Biden had traveled to Los Angeles on Monday, before the fires erupted, to be with his granddaughter, Naomi, who gave birth to his first great-grandchild earlier on Wednesday.

He had also planned to visit the Coachella Valley to announce one of two national monuments he declared in the state. But he scrapped the trip to avoid diverting law-enforcement resources during the fire emergency.

During the presidential campaign, Newsom blasted Trump over reports that he withheld aid to California after the deadly 2018 wildfires during his first term until aides told him that many Republicans live in the impacted areas.

“He doesn’t care about America,” Newsom tweeted at the time. “He only cares about himself.”

In a sit down with USA Today, Biden claimed that polls suggested he could have won a second term if he had not dropped out of the race amid concerns about his age following a shaky summer debate with Trump.

“It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes, based on the polling,” Biden told journalist Susan Page in an Oval Office interview conducted last weekend.

Biden admitted he couldn’t be sure he would have had been fit to serve effectively for another four years if he had won reelection.

“I don’t know. Who the hell knows? So far, so good,” Biden said. “But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”

Biden ended his campaign in July and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take the Democratic baton. His historic move came amid a growing chorus from allies and critics alike demanding for him to step down following the shaky debate that put a renewed focus on his age and fitness to serve.

Public polls at the time showed Biden badly trailing Trump. Harris enjoyed a bounce in public support after she launched her campaign but eventually lost both the Electoral College and popular vote to Trump.

Some Democrats believe Biden should have put the kibosh on a run for a second term much earlier in his presidency, perhaps after the 2022 midterm elections, to clear the way for a contested presidential primary battle.

But the president insisted that he acted in the best interests of the party, starting with his decision to come out of retirement to successfully oust Trump from the White House in 2020.

“When Trump was running … for reelection, I really thought I had the best chance of beating him,” the president said. “But I also wasn’t looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old. And so I did talk about passing the baton.”

Biden also claimed that Trump praised his record behind closed doors during the two rivals’ cordial White House meeting in November, a very stark contrast to the derisive attacks the president-elect has launched in public.

“He was very complimentary about some of the economic things I had done,” Biden said. “And he talked about … he thought I was leaving with a good record.”

The Florida jurist, who delivered several Trump-friendly rulings in the classified documents case, ordered the Department of Justice to keep the report sealed until an appeals court can assess objections to its release lodged by Trump and two co-defendants.

Cannon said her ruling aimed to “prevent irreparable harm arising from the circumstances…and to permit an orderly and deliberative sequence of events.”

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Justice Department to respond to the emergency motion by Wednesday morning.

Trump complained about Smith’s probes even as he praised Cannon’s ruling after being told of it by a reporter at a press conference.

“It’ll be a fake report just like it was a fake investigation,” he said.

Trump separately lost a bid on Tuesday to block Judge Juan Merchan from sentencing him Friday on 34 felony convictions in the Manhattan hush money case

The motion to keep the Smith report sealed was originally brought by two Trump employees who were charged along with the once-and-future president in the classified documents case. Trump joined the appeal, saying he too wants the report kept secret.

Cannon last year dismissed the documents case on the grounds that Smith was improperly appointed.

Cannon’s ruling appeared to apply to both the portion of the Smith’s report on the documents case or also a separate volume summarizing Smith’s findings in the election interference case, which she played no role in.

The special counsel dropped both cases after Trump won the November election, citing policies barring prosecution of a sitting president.

Smith has prepared a two-volume report on the cases which Attorney General Merrick Garland was expected to publicly release before Trump retakes office on Jan. 20, perhaps as soon as the end of this week.

Trump’s attorneys separately sent a letter to Garland demanding he remove Smith from his post immediately and kill the report, or allow Trump’s incoming attorney general to decide what to do with it.

“No report should be prepared or released, and Smith should be removed, including for even suggesting that course of action given his obvious political motivations and desire to lawlessly undermine the transition,” wrote attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, both of whom have been tapped for top Justice Department posts in the incoming administration.

The Smith report is expected to describe his decisions regarding Trump’s taking classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate, his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

Before Trump’s reelection scuttled the cases, Smith was seeking to convince an appeals court to overrule Cannon’s decision dismissing the documents case, which also accused Trump of obstructing the government’s efforts to get back the top-secret documents.

He was also trying to move forward with the election interference case after the Supreme Court hobbled the prosecution by granting Trump significant immunity for official actions taken while in power.