“They should give it up, because we need it for national security,” Mr. Trump said of Greenland.

Denmark, which has a smaller population than Texas, is not a huge trading partner for the United States. The country — a U.S. ally and a NATO member — sent the United States more than $11 billion worth of goods in 2023, just a tiny slice of more than $3 trillion of imports. The United States, in turn, sends Denmark more than $5 billion in goods, including industrial machinery, computers, aircraft and scientific instruments.

But despite its small size, Denmark, which handles Greenland’s foreign and security affairs, is home to some products that are very well-loved in America, goods that could become more expensive if Mr. Trump follows through with heavy tariffs. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a trade data platform, roughly half of Denmark’s recent exports to the United States are packaged medicines, insulin, vaccines and antibiotics.

That’s largely because the country is home to Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, the popular weight-loss drugs. The company is so important to the Danish economy — it has recently accounted for half of Denmark’s private sector job growth and all of the country’s economic growth — that some have branded Denmark a “pharmastate.”

Novo Nordisk is increasing its U.S. production to meet the soaring demand for its GLP-1 weight loss products. The company does not specify publicly how much of its products are exported, but it produces drugs in Denmark and the United States for the U.S. market.

A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk said in a statement that they were following the situation closely but would not comment on hypotheticals and speculation.

Gilberto Garcia, the chief economist at Datawheel and a member of the Observatory of Economic Complexity team, said that Denmark’s exports of immunological products, which includes drugs like Ozempic, have been “growing exponentially.”

Denmark is also the leading supplier to the United States of hearing aids, he said.

Beyond medicines, Denmark also sends the United States medical instruments, fish fillets, pig meat, coal tar oil, petroleum and baked goods, among other products, according to the OEC.

And notably, for many children (and adults) Denmark is home to Lego Group, the world’s largest toymaker.

It’s not clear how much Lego exports directly from Denmark to the United States — the company serves much of the U.S. market from a factory in Mexico, as well as a new carbon-neutral facility in Virginia. It also manufactures the toy bricks in factories in Hungary, the Czech Republic, China and Vietnam, as well as Denmark. Lego did not respond to requests for comment.

But Lego, like other multinational companies that have global supply chains shuffling raw materials and products around the world, could see its business disrupted by tariffs. Mr. Trump has threatened to put levies on products coming into the United States from Mexico, China and other countries globally, in addition to Denmark.

Mr. Trump’s threats to claim Greenland came in a rambling news conference in which the president-elect also suggested retaking the Panama Canal and making Canada an American state, all statements that riled foreign leaders.

Mr. Trump argued on Tuesday that U.S. ownership of Greenland was a national security issue, given the paths charted by Russian and Chinese ships.

“Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said in a statement. “Our future and fight for independence is our business.”

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the European Commission called Mr. Trump’s comments about seizing Greenland as “hypothetical.” When asked about tariff threats, the spokesman said that the European Commission had been preparing for all possible implications of a Trump presidency on trade in Europe.

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow in Brussels at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that few politicians in Europe take what Mr. Trump says literally.

“This is an outrageous demand,” Mr. Kirkegaard said of Mr. Trump’s threats to take Greenland. “The only way you can logically think of it is that by making this outrageous demand, Trump is going to get some concessions he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.”

Mr. Kirkegaard said that should Mr. Trump follow through with his threat to implement tariffs on Denmark, he could expect an E.U.-wide response. “This idea that he can pressure Denmark as a single member state of the E.U., to offer policy concession by threatening tariffs, is going to invite retaliation from all of the E.U.”

Mr. Trump put tariffs into effect on numerous countries and hundreds of billions of dollars of goods in his first term. But other tariff threats never materialized, and it’s not clear how many of his new threats he will follow through on.

On Tuesday, the president-elect also reiterated a threat to put “very serious tariffs” on Mexico and Canada, complained about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and the European Union, and floated an idea to rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America.”

“Why don’t we call it Mexican America? It sounds pretty, no?” Ms. Sheinbaum said while pointing to the map and smiling.

In response to Mr. Trump’s comment that Mexico was “essentially run by the cartels,” Ms. Sheinbaum told reporters on Wednesday that, “with all due respect,” the president-elect was ill-informed.

“In Mexico, the people rule,” she said. “And we are going to collaborate and understand each other with the government of President Trump, I am sure of it, defending our sovereignty as a free, independent and sovereign country.”

Ms. Sheinbaum also said that Mexico is willing to continue collaborating with the United States on various issues, including immigration containment, security and drug trafficking. “But we are also very interested in stopping the entry of U.S. firearms into Mexico,” she said, adding that about 75 percent of seized guns in Mexican territory are illegally smuggled from the United States.

In 2021, Mexico sued seven U.S. gun manufacturers and one distributor, accusing the companies of complicity in facilitating the flow of weapons to drug cartels. A lower court had dismissed the case. But last year a federal appeals panel ruled that the $10 billion lawsuit could proceed. In October, the Supreme Court agreed to take the case; it will hear arguments in March.

Unlike the United States, Mexico has strict gun control laws, with only one single gun store issuing fewer than 50 permits a year. Gun violence, however, continues to wreak havoc across the country

The repeated failures suggest that oil companies are either not interested in drilling in the refuge or do not think it’s worth the cost, despite insistence by Mr. Trump and many Republican lawmakers that the refuge should be opened up for drilling. The Biden administration offered 400,000 acres after shaving off one million acres from the original boundaries to avoid areas crucial to the polar bear and Porcupine caribou populations.

“The lack of interest from oil companies in development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge reflects what we and they have known all along: There are some places too special and sacred to exploit with oil and gas drilling,” Laura Daniel-Davis, the acting deputy secretary of the Interior Department, said in a statement.

Some Alaska lawmakers and officials, including the governor, had said before the sale that the decision by the Biden administration to shrink the leasing area would guarantee failure. Republican lawmakers have said that the wilderness area would generate a multibillion-dollar windfall as soon as drillers were allowed inside the refuge.

But Ms. Daniel-Davis noted that the oil and gas industry is “sitting on millions of acres of undeveloped leases elsewhere” and should pursue those first. “We’d suggest that’s a prudent place to start, rather than engage further in speculative leasing in one of the most spectacular places in the world,” she said.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an expanse of roughly 19 million acres along the North Slope of Alaska. It’s one of the last truly wild places in the United States. It also includes land considered sacred by the Gwich’in, an Alaska Native group.

Several major banks have said they would not finance any projects in the refuge. Drilling there would be difficult and costly because there are no roads or facilities.

But for Mr. Trump, the refuge is a field of dreams. He has called it “the biggest find anywhere in the world, as big as Saudi Arabia” and on the campaign trail he frequently assailed President Biden’s efforts to protect the wild area. On Monday, Mr. Trump said drilling in the expanse remained one of his top energy priorities and pledged that extracting its “liquid gold” would help bring down the price of gasoline and groceries.

“We’re going to be opening up ANWR,” he said, using the acronym for the refuge. “We’re going to be doing all sorts of things that nobody thinks is possible.”

Democrats and Republicans have fought over the question of drilling in the Alaskan wilderness for half a century. Drilling in the refuge was barred in 1980. That ban ended with a 2017 tax bill that Congress passed and Mr. Trump signed into law in his first term. He frequently takes credit for opening the refuge.

“I got it done,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in October. “Ronald Reagan couldn’t get it done. Nobody could get it done. I got it done.”

Republicans passed legislation that required two lease sales in ANWR to be held by 2024. They predicted the leases would generate $2 billion in royalties over 10 years. Half would go to the state of Alaska, and the other half would help to pay for Mr. Trump’s tax cuts.

Two weeks before Mr. Trump left office in 2021, the Interior Department held the first auction. It was a dud.

Alaska’s state-owned economic development corporation was the only bidder on nine of the tracts offered for lease in the northernmost section of the refuge, and half of the offered leases drew no bids at all. The Interior Department reported that the auction yielded a total of $14.4 million in bids.

After Mr. Biden took office, his administration suspended the leases, saying the Interior Department had not sufficiently analyzed the impact that drilling would have in the environmentally sensitive region. Then, leases sold in the 2021 auction were forfeited, relinquished, or canceled by the Biden administration.

The new environmental review, issued in November, recommended additional protections for wildlife, waterways and permafrost. It called for restricting leases to the northern and western part of the plain, areas not used by the Porcupine caribou herd.

In the sale conducted this week, the Biden administration offered 400,000 acres, the minimum amount required by law. The deadline to submit bids was Jan. 6.

The state of Alaska on Monday sued the Biden administration over the size of the lease area, saying it made the area economically unviable for oil drilling. If Alaska is successful in its lawsuit, the Trump administration could potentially redo the sale and offer more land.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, wrote in a post on social media that the Biden administration “cloaked its latest sanction on Alaska as a lease sale in ANWR,” which is “designed to fail” and part of an anti-energy “nightmare” for the state

The decision raised the prospect that the report might never be made public at all. The case against Mr. Trump’s co-defendants is likely to continue into his second term starting Jan. 20, when he could pardon the men and end the case altogether. His appointees would then have the power to continue keeping Mr. Smith’s report secret.

The government’s filing, before a federal appeals court in Atlanta, came one day after Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who oversaw — and ultimately threw out — the documents case, issued an injunction temporarily barring the department from releasing Mr. Smith’s report. Her order did not appear to distinguish between the volume about the documents case and the one compiled by Mr. Smith and his team about their separate case against Mr. Trump for his attempt to overturn his loss of the 2020 election.

The Justice Department does plan to release the portion of Mr. Smith’s report focusing on the election interference charges, the court papers said. That case was dropped after Mr. Trump won the election as prosecutors bowed to a longstanding Justice Department policy that prohibits pursuing criminal prosecutions against sitting presidents.

In their filing to the appeals court, prosecutors said that Mr. Garland would make Mr. Smith’s report about the classified documents case available to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, except for information that is covered by a grand jury secrecy rule.

“So far, so good,” he told USA Today. “But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”

That was exactly the point many Democrats raised privately for months before the issue exploded into public view with the televised debate in June, when a frail-looking Mr. Biden struggled to finish sentences and at times appeared blank or confused.

Until then and even after the debate for a few weeks, Mr. Biden and his closest advisers argued that he was still vigorous enough to beat Mr. Trump despite polls showing widespread doubts about his capacity, including among Democrats. Even now, after his stand-in, Vice President Kamala Harris, lost to Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden said he would have prevailed.

“It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes,” Mr. Biden said in the interview. But when the question turned to whether he would have been able to bear the extraordinary burdens that come with the presidency until age 86, Mr. Biden, already the oldest president in American history, conceded doubts that he rarely admits to. “I don’t know,” he said.

“When Trump was running again for re-election, I really thought I had the best chance of beating him,” Mr. Biden said of the 2020 contest that he won. “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.”

Mr. Biden added: “But I don’t know. Who the hell knows?”

Mr. Biden also confirmed in the interview that he was considering granting pre-emptive pardons to some of Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies to protect them against what the incoming president has vowed will be “retribution.” Among those known to be under consideration are figures like former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who led the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

During his meeting with Mr. Trump after the election, Mr. Biden said he tried to dissuade him from pursuing his adversaries.

“I tried to make clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores,” Mr. Biden said. Mr. Trump did not say much in response. “He didn’t reinforce it. He just basically listened.”

Mr. Biden’s decision to run for re-election may prove to be one of the most consequential of his presidency and a major factor in his legacy. By insisting at first that he could still serve as president into his mid-80s, he went back on his 2020 promise to be a “bridge” to another generation, preventing the party from grooming a successor earlier.

By the time he dropped out, the party had no time for a full competition to replace him as its nominee. Ms. Harris, who stepped up to take the nomination in part by default, had just 107 days to mount a general election campaign against Mr. Trump and fell short by 1.5 percentage points in the popular vote.

Many Democrats have soured on Mr. Biden as a result, blaming him for Mr. Trump’s return to power. “I don’t think there is any doubt that our country would have been better off if President Biden had decided not to run for re-election,” Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado told The New York Times a few weeks after the election, reflecting widespread sentiments in the party.

Mr. Biden’s age and capacity have been an issue through much of his tenure. Aides and allies who work closely with him have long said that he remains mentally sharp in asking questions, processing information and making decisions even as he has aged visibly in terms of his physical appearance and ability to communicate his thoughts.

While he sometimes struggles to summon names or words as anyone his age might, they said, it has not affected his ability to make judgments and lead wisely.

But his halting gait, softening voice and increasing frailty have made it harder for him to project strength and command the national stage. The interview with USA Today itself demonstrated how the White House tried to shield him from encounters that might throw him off. After four years in office, it was the first time he has ever given an interview to any reporter from a major mainstream newspaper.

Unlike any president in generations, he has never given one while in office to reporters from newspapers like The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times or The New York Times. Overall, Mr. Biden has given fewer interviews of any kind and conducted fewer news conferences than any president in decades.

Susan Page, the Washington Bureau chief for USA Today who conducted her newspaper’s interview with him on Sunday at the White House, wrote that over the course of nearly an hour he “was engaged and loquacious, though at times he spoke so softly that it was difficult to hear him.”

He made the case that age has been an asset for him. “I think the only advantage of being an old guy is that I’ve known every major world leader for a long time. And so I had a perspective on each of them and their interests,” said Mr. Biden, who previously served 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president. “And so I think it helped me navigate some of the fundamental changes taking place, whether it’s in Europe, in Latin America, in the Middle East, in the Far East.”

During the interview, he expressed frustration with misinformation and Mr. Trump’s ability to lie without consequence. And he said he regretted how long it had taken to get the road, bridge and other infrastructure projects he financed going to show the benefits of his policies. But he expressed optimism that he will eventually be remembered for his achievements.

“I hope that history says that I came in and I had a plan how to restore the economy and re-establish America’s leadership in the world,” Mr. Biden said. “That was my hope. I mean, you know, who knows? And I hope it records that I did it with honesty and integrity, that I said what was on my mind.”

“I am not sure he understands the situation here — it is already hell,” said Alaa Isam, 33, from Deir al Balah, in central Gaza.

Negotiations to end the war between Israel and Hamas have made little progress, leaving civilians in Gaza caught in the crossfire with little hope for the future.

“We have been being killed for 15 months,” Mr. Isam said. “We have been through two cold winters in tents, two hot summers that ruined our food. We have been subject to starvation and people died out of hunger, in addition to the continuous brutal bombardment of everywhere.”

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t want to hurt the negotiation” for a hostage exchange and a cease-fire agreement that remain under discussion. Mr. Trump’s incoming top Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, is expected to join those talks in Doha, Qatar, later this week.

But Mr. Trump was explicit about threatening consequences should Hamas refuse to release about 100 remaining hostages — at least a third of whom are presumed dead — who were taken from Israeli territory and have been held since the militant group led the attack on Israel.

“It will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone,” he said.

“If the deal isn’t done before I take office, which is now going to be two weeks, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” Mr. Trump added.

His comments reverberated Wednesday across Gaza, including with some civilians who understood the threat to mean that Palestinians would be punished and not Israel if an agreement on the hostages is not reached by Jan. 20, when Mr. Trump is inaugurated.

Akram al-Satri, 47, a freelance translator from Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, said he found it strange that Mr. Trump “does not realize that Gaza has been deprived of all forms of life, and that he thinks he could add to that hell while Israel had not been spared any effort in turning the lives of Gazans into something far uglier than hell.”

“All of us who witness bombs dropping over our heads daily” were living “a reality that is more destructive and miserable than hell,” he added.

While most Gazans mainly blame Israel for the death and destruction around them, many also say they hold Hamas responsible for starting the war.

“Hamas should have reached an agreement long time ago,” said Abdul Aziz Said, 33, who is also from Deir al Balah. “They say ending the war is their priority, but do not act like this is the case. I know Israel is not offering them anything serious, but I don’t care. I want this killing to stop.”

Mr. Witkoff on Tuesday struck an optimistic tone that a deal could soon be reached. “I think that we’ve had some really great progress, and I’m really hopeful that by the inaugural we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president,” he said, standing next to Mr. Trump.

Regardless of the war’s outcome, several Gazans interviewed on Wednesday said they feared a continuation of the pro-Israel policies Mr. Trump pursued in his first term, from 2017 to 2021.

In those years, the American Embassy in Israel was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which Palestinians also claim as their capital, and the United States also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. Palestinians and their allies in Arab states also worry that Mr. Trump will not stop Israel from annexing more disputed areas in the West Bank and occupying at least parts of Gaza.

But many Palestinians have fumed over the past year that the United States, under President Biden, has not done more to protect them from Israeli strikes that have leveled their cities and halted humanitarian aid deliveries.

Just this past week, the Biden administration informed Congress that it would allow American weapons producers to sell $8 billion in arms to Israel, including 500-pound bombs that can cause significant injury and death, especially in areas with little protection, like tent camps. Many of the weapons would most likely be shipped over the next two years, but some could be delivered within months.

“The engine of this entire ugly and unjust offensive is America,” said Amna Soliman, 42, a former teacher at the American International School in Gaza. “There is nothing left of Gaza.”

Forced to flee her home in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, Ms. Soliman said that at least a half-dozen of her relatives had died and that she had lost her job since the start of the war’s “hellish reality.”

“We are already living in fear and worry and horror,” she added.

Mr. Trump argues that he is entitled to full immunity from prosecution, and even sentencing, now that he is the president-elect. His lawyers have based that claim on a Supreme Court ruling last year that granted former presidents broad immunity for official acts.

“This court should enter an immediate stay of further proceedings in the New York trial court,” the application said, “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government.”

The Supreme Court directed prosecutors to respond to Mr. Trump’s application by Thursday morning, an indication that the justices may act before the scheduled sentencing. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Mr. Trump on charges of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal, declined to comment, saying only that the office would respond in court papers.

The filing capped a whirlwind stretch of legal wrangling for the former and future president, who is scrambling to avoid the embarrassing spectacle of a sentencing.

Although the trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, has signaled that he would spare Mr. Trump jail time, his sentencing would carry symbolic importance. It would formalize Mr. Trump’s status as a felon, making him the first president to hold that dubious designation.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued in the Supreme Court filing that officially becoming a felon might also complicate Mr. Trump’s presidential duties.

“The prospect of imposing sentence on President Trump just before he assumes office as the 47th president raises the specter of other possible restrictions on liberty, such as travel, reporting requirements, registration, probationary requirements, and others — all of which would be constitutionally intolerable under the doctrine of presidential immunity,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote.

“Indeed, every adjudication of a felony conviction results in significant collateral consequences for the defendant, regardless of whether a term of imprisonment is imposed.”

The filing noted that Mr. Trump had also asked New York’s highest court, its Court of Appeals, for an emergency stay, acknowledging that litigants must ordinarily seek relief from lower courts before turning to the Supreme Court. Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote that the state court was unlikely to act in time and so “filing applications in both courts appears to be the only viable option.”

A Supreme Court stay might scuttle Mr. Trump’s sentencing for good.

The window to sentence him is rapidly closing — once he returns to the White House, Mr. Trump cannot face prosecution — and he would be 82 after his second term. It is unclear whether the trial judge would still seek to impose Mr. Trump’s sentence four years later.

For now, Mr. Trump’s odds of success at the Supreme Court are unclear. The district attorney’s office is likely to argue that the court does not have jurisdiction yet, because Mr. Trump has not exhausted his appeals in state court.

But while some legal experts doubted the merits of his application, the justices have come to his rescue before. The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling in July effectively thwarted a federal criminal case against Mr. Trump for his effort to subvert the 2020 election results.

And even as other courts have grown hostile to Mr. Trump’s arguments in the New York case, he might find a friendlier reception at the Supreme Court, where the 6-to-3 conservative majority includes three justices he appointed during his first term. Five can grant a stay.

Michael Dorf, a law professor at Cornell, said Mr. Trump may well prevail.

“The application raises a novel question about whether presidential immunity extends to a president-elect, and, given the Supreme Court’s handling of Trump’s prior cases, has a fair chance of success,” Professor Dorf said.

But he added that Mr. Trump “does not in any real sense need the relief he seeks” because “there is no risk that the further proceedings would impinge in any way on Trump’s time.”

Over the years, Mr. Trump had mixed success at the court. That changed in the term that ended in July, which included three big victories for the former president.

In addition to the immunity ruling, the court allowed him to seek another term despite a constitutional provision barring insurrectionists from holding office, and cast doubt on two of the four charges against him in the since-scuttled federal prosecution over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

The new application will be an early test of the court’s independence in Mr. Trump’s second term, and its ruling may set the tone for what will surely be a fire hose of litigation arising from Mr. Trump’s plans to test the limits of presidential authority in, among many other areas, immigration and the economy.

Mr. Trump’s application was filed by two of his picks for top jobs in the Justice Department: Todd Blanche, Mr. Trump’s choice for deputy attorney general, and D. John Sauer, his selection for solicitor general.

They argued that Mr. Trump’s status as president-elect required special protections.

“President Trump is currently engaged in the most crucial and sensitive tasks of preparing to assume the executive power in less than two weeks, all of which are essential to the United States’ national security and vital interests,” the application said.

“Forcing President Trump to prepare for a criminal sentencing in a felony case while he is preparing to lead the free world as president of the United States in less than two weeks imposes an intolerable, unconstitutional burden on him that undermines these vital national interests.”

In May, a New York jury found Mr. Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide a payoff to a porn star. Ever since, he has sought to unravel the verdict or at least postpone the sentencing, an effort that gained momentum in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

Justice Merchan, the trial judge, recently rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to throw out the case based on that ruling. The judge concluded that because the ruling concerned a president’s “official acts,” it did not apply to the New York case, which centered on the “decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records.”

Even Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who wrote the majority opinion, held that not every act a president takes is official, Justice Merchan noted.

Mr. Trump this week filed a civil action against Justice Merchan to unwind his ruling, and asked the state appellate court to pause his sentencing. But at a hearing Tuesday, a lawyer for the district attorney’s office emphasized that the case centered on “unofficial conduct,” a sex scandal before his presidency. Mr. Trump’s claim of immunity, the lawyer said, was “baseless.”

Ellen Gesmer, the New York appellate court judge assigned to hear the emergency request, was similarly dubious. At the hearing, Justice Gesmer was immediately skeptical of Mr. Trump’s arguments, grilling his lawyer, Mr. Blanche, about whether he had “any support for a notion that presidential immunity extends to president-elects?”

Mr. Blanche conceded that he did not, saying, “There has never been a case like this before.”

Justice Gesmer also pointed out that Mr. Trump was no longer facing jail time, suggesting that he would not suffer much harm from the sentencing. In a recent ruling, Justice Merchan suggested that he would impose an unconditional discharge of Mr. Trump’s sentence, a rare and lenient alternative to jail or probation.

Although Mr. Trump faces up to four years in prison, Justice Merchan’s plan reflected the practical impossibility of jailing a sitting president.

In ordinary felony cases that involve falsifying business records, defendants often spend time behind bars. But nothing about Mr. Trump’s case was ordinary.

It stems from a hush-money payment made in 2016 to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who at the time was threatening to go public with her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.

Rather than risk a scandal during his presidential campaign that year, Mr. Trump directed his fixer at the time, Michael D. Cohen, to pay Ms. Daniels $130,000.

When Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen, the jury at his trial concluded, he concocted a plan to cover up the deal with a series of false records.

Mr. Trump’s application to the Supreme Court quoted at length from the Presidential Transition Act, a federal law that sets out procedures “to promote orderly transitions in the office of president.”

Without noting Mr. Trump’s own efforts to subvert the 2020 election in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the application said the law should govern the current transition.

“Any disruption occasioned by the transfer of the executive power,” the application said, quoting the law, “could produce results detrimental to the safety and well-being of the United States and its people.”

Maggie Haberman and Kate Christobek contributed reporting

He has also claimed Panama charges U.S. vessels “exorbitant prices,” and warned that if they are not reduced after he takes office next month, he will demand that the United States be granted control of the canal “in full, quickly and without question.”

While it is unclear what prompted Mr. Trump’s recent obsession with the Panama Canal, some Republicans have long objected to a decades-old treaty that turned the shipping lane over to Panamanian control. When Ronald Reagan ran for president, he said the people of the United States were the canal’s “rightful owners” and brought audiences to their feet with the line: “We bought it; we paid for it; we built it.”

After a failed attempt by the French to construct a canal, it was ultimately built by the United States between 1904 and 1914. And the U.S. government managed the canal for several decades.

The U.S. also played a role in the creation of the state of Panama. At the beginning of the 20th century, the isthmus of Panama was part of Colombia. When Colombia rejected a proposed canal treaty, the U.S. government encouraged a rebellion. Colombia’s northern provinces eagerly seceded, forming the Republic of Panama. The United States Navy then kept Colombian troops from suppressing the rebellion.

U.S. control of the canal created significant tensions with Panama. In 1964, anti-American riots broke out in the U.S.-controlled canal zone.

The riots led to the renegotiation of the Panama Canal treaties. In 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Panamanian leader Omar Efraín Torrijos signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaties. The agreements guaranteed the permanent neutrality of the Panama Canal. After a period of joint custody, the treaties called for the United States to relinquish control over the canal by the year 2000.

Panama took full control in 1999, and has since operated the canal through the Panama Canal Authority.

Mr. Carter, who died on Dec. 29, always considered the treaties to be signature achievements, and they figured prominently in his obituary.

“Through a bizarre accident of timing, we now have one president fantasizing about taking back the canal at just the time the world recognizes the canal transfer as an important part of a late president’s legacy,” said James Fallows, who was Mr. Carter’s speechwriter at the time and accompanied the president on that 1978 trip to Panama.

How has Panama responded?

In a statement of rebuke to Mr. Trump last month, President José Raúl Mulino of Panama wrote “every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent area belong to PANAMA.”

Mr. Mulino also said U.S. vessels are not being overcharged. Rates being charged to ships and naval vessels, he insisted, are “not on a whim.”

Panamanian officials said all countries are subject to the same fees, though they would differ based on ship size. They are established in public meetings by the Panama Canal Authority, and take into account market conditions, international competition, operating and maintenance costs, Mr. Mulino said.

Rates have gone up recently, however. That’s because starting in 2023, Panama experienced severe drought, driven by a combination of El Niño and climate change, which Mr. Trump has called a hoax. With water levels at Gatun Lake, the principal hydrological reserve for the canal, at historically low levels, authorities reduced shipping through the canal to conserve the lake’s fresh water.

A Trump spokeswoman said that because the United States is the biggest user of the canal, the increase in fees hits its ships the mo

Chinese soldiers are not, as Mr. Trump has claimed, “operating” the Panama Canal.

“There are no Chinese soldiers in the canal, for the love of God,” Mr. Mulino said in a speech Thursday. “The world is free to visit the canal.”

A Hong Kong-based firm, CK Hutchison Holdings, does manage two ports at the canal’s entrances. And some experts have said that does raise valid competitive and security concerns for the United States.

Ryan C. Berg, the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, noted that CK Hutchison would likely have data on all ships coming through the Panama Canal. China has been using its shipping and maritime operations to gather foreign intelligence and conduct espionage.

“China exercises, or could exercise, a certain element of control even absent some military conflagration,” Mr. Berg said. “I think there is reason to be worried.”

Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said Tuesday that China “will as always respect Panama’s sovereignty” over the Panama Canal.

China is the second-largest user of the Panama Canal after the United States. In 2017, Panama cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognized the island as part of China, a major win for Beijing.

Can the United States reassert control?

Not easily.

Mr. Mulino has made clear the Panama Canal is not for sale. He noted that the treaties established permanent neutrality of the canal and “guaranteeing its open and safe operation for all nations.” And the Senate ratified the Panama Canal treaties in 1978.

Mick Mulvaney, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, suggested that the provocations were merely part of a negotiating tactic to get rates down.

“You know, I don’t envision American troops going in to retake the canal, but you got to think that someone is out there scratching their head going, ‘Is Donald Trump crazy enough to do something like that?’” Mr. Mulvaney said Tuesday on “The Hill” on News Nation.

Mr. Berg said the neutrality agreement made it unlikely that Panama would even be able to grant special rates to the United States. And, he noted, Mr. Mulino is “incredibly pro-American” and likely eager to help the incoming Trump administration deal with issues like illegal immigration.

“President Mulino is going to be a great ally with the United States,” Mr. Berg said. “We should not want this to devolve into some kind of political fight because we’re going to need President Mulino on a number of other issues.”

But there is, as Mr. Trump has threatened, a military option. Mr. Trump could as president order an invasion of Panama. Under the terms of its constitution, Panama has no army. But experts dismissed Mr. Trump’s threat on Tuesday as empty intimidation.

“If the U.S. wanted to flout international law and act like Vladimir Putin, the U.S. could invade Panama and recover the canal,” said Benjamin Gaden, director of the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program in Washington. “No one would see it as a legitimate act, and it would bring not only grievous damage to their image, but instability to the canal.

It is a seemingly technical question that reveals a fundamental divide among Republicans about whether to prioritize a wide-ranging crackdown on immigration or cutting taxes, previewing what could be months of intramural policy debate.

Some Republicans have argued that they should pass two bills in order to quickly push through legislation focused on immigration at the southern border, a key campaign promise for Mr. Trump and his party’s candidates. But Republicans devoted to lowering taxes have pressed for one mammoth bill to ensure that tax cuts are not left on the cutting-room floor.

President-elect Donald J. Trump is set to meet with Republican senators in Washington on Wednesday, and those lawmakers hope he clarifies his preferred strategy. He has so far waffled between the two ideas, prolonging the dispute.

“I like one big beautiful bill, I always have and always will, but if two is more certain, it does go a little bit quicker because you can do the immigration stuff early,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference on Tuesday.

Republicans are planning to ram the partisan fiscal package through the Senate over the opposition of Democrats using a process called reconciliation, which allows them to steer clear of a filibuster and pass bills with a simple majority vote. But for much of this year, Republicans will be working with a one-seat majority in the House and a three-seat majority in the Senate, meaning they will need near unanimity to pass major legislation.

That has left some worried that it will be hard enough passing one bill, much less two.

“There’s serious risk in having multiple bills that have to pass to get your agenda through,” Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority leader, said. “When you know you’ve got a lot of people that want this first package, if you only put certain things in the first package, they can vote no on the second and you lose the whole second package. That would be devastating.”

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Adding to the urgency of achieving their policy goals, Republicans are facing a political disaster should they fail to deliver. Many of the tax cuts they put into place in 2017, the last time Mr. Trump was president, expire at the end of the year. That means that taxes on most Americans could go up if Congress does not pass a tax bill this year.

Passing tax cuts can take time, though. While much of the Republican tax agenda involves continuing measures the party passed in 2017, Mr. Trump and other Republicans have floated additional ideas, including no taxes on tips and new incentives for corporations to manufacture in the United States. Ideas like that could take months to formulate into workable policy.

Then there is the gigantic cost. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that simply extending the 2017 tax cuts would cost more than $4 trillion over a decade — a price tag that would grow if other tax cuts, like Mr. Trump’s proposal to not tax overtime pay, are included.

Further complicating support for the legislation is that Republicans plan to raise the debt limit through reconciliation, another sensitive issue for fiscal hawks.

Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus have said they would not support any legislation unless the costs it introduces are offset by spending cuts. While most Republicans support reining in federal spending, agreeing on which federal programs to slash always proves harder than expected. In an attempted workaround, Republicans have instead begun to explore ways to change Washington’s budget rules so the tax cuts are shown to cost less.

The complexity of pulling together a tax bill that can secure the necessary votes has some Republicans hoping to hold off until later in the year and first charge ahead with a smaller bill focused on immigration, energy and military issues. Republicans have not yet publicly sketched out what that bill would look like.

Proponents of that strategy argue it would deliver Mr. Trump an early political victory on immigration and treat a top Republican campaign issue with the urgency it deserves.

“The No. 1 priority is securing our border,” Representative Byron Donalds of Florida told reporters on Tuesday. “In my opinion it’s the top priority, and everything else is a close second.”

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the chairman of the Budget Committee who will be overseeing the reconciliation process, has also pressed for a two-bill approach. “If you hold border security hostage to get tax cuts, you’re playing Russian roulette with our national security,” he sa

Republicans have looked to Mr. Trump to intervene and set a clear direction for the party. On Sunday, he wrote on social media that Congress should pass “one powerful Bill,” an apparent victory for lawmakers like Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who had championed that approach. Mr. Trump’s later equivocation, though, has left Republicans still unsure of which strategy they should pursue.

Mr. Trump’s meeting with top Republican senators on Wednesday will be followed by a discussion with various House Republicans in Florida over the weekend, where they are expected to discuss the party’s agenda.

In a sign of how politically complicated the tax cut discussion could get, one of the sessions is expected to focus on relaxing the $10,000 limit on the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT.

Republicans included the $10,000 limit in the 2017 tax law as a way to contain the cost of that legislation. But the move angered House Republicans from high-tax states like New York and New Jersey, many of whom voted against the entire 2017 tax bill as a result. Such defections are a luxury that Republican leaders can’t afford this year given their narrow majority.

G.O.P. lawmakers from New York, New Jersey and California could tank a tax bill if they are unsatisfied with how the provision is handled. They are now pushing to lift the cap as part of the party’s tax bill. Eliminating the cap entirely could add roughly $1 trillion to the price tag of the legislation.

Maneuvering ambitious policy agendas through Congress has often been a messy and time-consuming process for presidents. A Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act during Mr. Trump’s first term collapsed after more than six months of discussion.

After quickly passing pandemic relief measures in 2021 under President Biden, much of Democrats’ broader agenda was stymied for almost two years before a second party-line measure passed that was far narrower than many in the party had hoped.

This time around, Republicans will be grappling not only with a historically slim margin in the House, but also a president prone to sudden changes of heart.

“You can argue the merits of both” strategies, said Representative Jodey Arrington, a Texas Republican who leads the House Budget Committee. “He has to tell us what he wants and what