President-elect Donald Trump may create an opening in Florida for a U.S. Senate seat, with his expected nomination of Sen. Marco Rubio to become Secretary of State.

READ MORE: Trump Victory Was ‘Slim’ and Not the ‘Historic Mandate’ Republicans Claim, Analysis Shows

In 2008, when Barack Obama became President-elect, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich had the responsibility to fill Obama’s Senate seat. Blagojevich, later convicted of corruption, was infamously recorded saying, “I’ve got this thing, and it’s (bleeping) golden… I’m just not giving it up for (bleeping) nothing.” After serving eight years of his 14-year sentence, Blagojevich’s prison term was commuted by President Donald Trump in 2020.

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who ran unsuccessfully, and, critics say, poorly, for the GOP presidential nomination, has some options, which include handing the seat to a Trump—or to a DeSantis.

Senator Rubio won re-election in 2022, and his six-year term does not end until 2028.

Should Rubio be nominated and confirmed, Gov. DeSantis would need to appoint a temporary seat holder who could choose to run in 2026 for the seat. The seat would also be up for election on schedule, in 2028.

In 2010, West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin declined to appoint himself to an open Senate seat and appointed his 36-year-old legal adviser instead. Four days later he launched a campaign to run for the seat, and won it that year.

DeSantis’s chief of staff, James Uthmeier, “could act as a caretaker in the Senate role until 2026,” CBS News reports. “This move would give DeSantis the option to run for the Senate seat himself in the 2026 special election, aligning with the end of his gubernatorial term.”

He could also appoint his Lt. Governor, Jeanette Nunez, to the seat.

READ MORE: ‘No Excuse’: Dems Have Just Weeks to Get Dozens of Biden’s Judicial Nominees Confirmed

Or, “DeSantis could work with Nunez to resign as governor, allowing her to ascend to the governorship and appoint him directly to the Senate seat, bypassing the need to wait until 2026.”

“There’s also speculation that DeSantis could appoint his wife, Casey DeSantis to the seat. Casey DeSantis has long been involved in state government and she enjoys wide popularity across the state.”

But there are other options.

U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) “is publicly calling for President-elect Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump to be chosen to fill [the] Florida Senate seat — a sign of Trump allies potentially rallying around the pick,” Axios reports.

Lara Trump, who is married to Eric Trump, was handed another top position recently: co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

Before getting involved in politics, she was a producer for TV’s “Inside Edition,” worked on the Trump 2020 campaign, and spoke at Trump’s January 6, 2021 Save America rally that preceded the insurrection. She was also rumored to be interested in running for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina in 2021.

She has no experience in government.

But Talking Points Memo founder and editor Josh Marshall asks, “how much say does DeSantis even get over a replacement?”

“I think too,” he adds, “people are overlooking the distinct possibility that Rubio’s [appointment] is less about giving him [Secretary of] State than giving someone else his Senate seat.”

READ MORE: ‘What Illegal Corruption Looks Like’: Trump Blasted for ‘Already Breaking the Law’

This article has been updated to include Marshall’s remarks.

President-elect Donald Trump last week declared he had won a “historic mandate,” but as states continue to count votes, his margin continues to shrink, debunking his claim.

Most notably, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office, there are more than 2.6 million votes left to be counted in the Golden State, out of a total of more than 13 million.

The Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, also wasted no time claiming a “mandate” for the GOP, just as Trump did.

“The American people have spoken and given us a mandate. We will be prepared to deliver on day one. With Republicans in control, we will secure the border, grow our economy, restore American energy dominance, and end the radical woke agenda. America’s best days are ahead of us,” he claimed.

As recently as Monday, New York Republican Party chair Ed Cox also called it a “historic mandate.”

READ MORE: ‘No Excuse’: Dems Have Just Weeks to Get Dozens of Biden’s Judicial Nominees Confirmed

The results are clear: Donald Trump won the White House and Republicans are projected to have a majority in the House and the Senate—but any claim to a “mandate,” or a “historic” election is false, say critics.

“Yes, Trump won, but it is not a mandate,” declared former Under Secretary of State Richard Stengel, a former managing editor of TIME magazine. “His very slim popular vote margin seems outsized only in comparison to the fact that Rs seldom win the popular vote. He got fewer votes than last time. He won because of the millions of folks who chose not to vote—hardly a mandate.”

“As blue Western states and cities finish counting votes, it looks like the popular vote ‘landslide’ projected for Donald Trump last week turned out to be a trickle,” writes The Nation‘s Joan Walsh. “When all the votes are counted, he will end up with a margin of roughly two points over Vice President Kamala Harris. Presidents Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1972 won more than 60 percent of the popular vote; Ronald Reagan in 1984 won 58 percent. Those were landslides.”

Walsh acknowledges that the results are not “good news” for Democrats.

READ MORE: ‘What Illegal Corruption Looks Like’: Trump Blasted for ‘Already Breaking the Law’

“But it’s not the top-to-bottom repudiation of Democrats as it first looked like, and the way to respond is not to launch a civil war within the Democratic Party,: she notes. “Unfortunately, that has already begun. Centrists blame the doctrine of ‘woke,’ with particular ire for trans Americans (we see you, New York Rep. Tom Suozzi); leftists say Democrats abandoned the working class (we hear you, once again, Senator Bernie Sanders). Both positions are wrong. Others point fingers at the Harris campaign. Meanwhile, much of the media hypes Trump’s win as a landslide, which would seem to validate his racist, anti-worker agenda.”

Currently, according to the Cook Political Report’s vote tracker, Donald Trump is beating Kamala Harris by about 3.2 million votes, or 2.17%. Those number will change, of course, but the margin will likely stay about the same if not narrow.

“When the votes are all counted,” The Washington Post’s Philip Bump notes, “Trump will likely end up with the narrowest margin of victory since 2000. And it’s probably in large part because a lot of 2020 Biden voters stayed home.”

“It is likely that,” he continues, “when all of the votes are counted, Trump will have received about half of the votes cast, beating Vice President Kamala Harris by about a percentage point. As a function of the two-party vote, Trump’s popular vote victory — his first — will probably be the smallest since Al Gore received more votes than George W. Bush in 2000.”

Focusing on swing states, as Vice President Harris did during her 107-day campaign, Bump adds, “while most non-swing states probably saw drops in turnout, it is likely to be the case that most of the seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — will have seen increases in vote totals. It’s another indication that the Harris campaign’s intense focus on those states provided a boost to her candidacy, albeit a fruitless one. (Last week, we noted that the shift in the presidential vote margin in the swing states was smaller than other states, which suggests the same thing.)”

READ MORE: ‘Tenfold Increase in Number of Deportations’: Trump Hands Stephen Miller Top Policy Post

As Congress enters the lame duck session Tuesday with Republicans set to take the majority in both chambers and the White House next year, Senate Democrats have just a few weeks to get dozens of President Joe Biden’s remaining judicial nominees confirmed. Barring impeachment, a federal judge is appointed for life and cannot be forcibly removed.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is urging her colleagues to prioritize judicial confirmations.

“While still in charge of the Senate and the White House, we must do all we can to safeguard our democracy,” Sen. Warren wrote in a TIME op-ed last week. “Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer must use every minute of the end-of-year legislative session to confirm federal judges and key regulators—none of whom can be removed by the next President.”

Majority Leader Schumer, The New York Times reported late last week, “indicated a willingness to devote significant Senate floor time to seating more judges in the post-election session…About 30 nominees were already in the confirmation pipeline, and Mr. Biden announced two more on Friday night.”

READ MORE: Trump Border Czar Declares He Will ‘Absolutely’ Need to Use ‘Military and Special Ops’

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

Noting that this is Senate Democrats’ last chance “until at least 2029 to put judges on the courts,” journalist and attorney Chris Geidner breaks down the field. He reports, “there are four appellate nominees awaiting a vote of the full Senate and one awaiting committee action. The four nominees awaiting a floor vote are Karla Campbell (Sixth Circuit), Embry Kidd (Eleventh Circuit), Julia Lipez (First Circuit), Adeel Mangi (Third Circuit), and the nominee in committee is Ryan Park (Fourth Circuit).”

He adds, “there are 13 district court nominees awaiting a vote of the full Senate, meanwhile, with 10 more in committee and two more announced.”

Josh Sorbe, spokesperson for U.S. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, in a statement to NCRM says the Illinois Democrat “aims to confirm every possible nominee before the end of this Congress.” He also points to the “213 highly qualified, diverse judges to date who help ensure the fair and impartial administration of the American justice system.”

Over the weekend, President-elect Trump issued a warning to Senate Republicans, and ordered that “no Judges should be approved during this period of time because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.”

READ MORE: ‘What Illegal Corruption Looks Like’: Trump Blasted for ‘Already Breaking the Law’

Biden White House spokesperson Andrew Bates blasted Trump.

“Regardless of party, the American people expect their leaders to prioritize the rule of law and ensuring the criminal justice system can function effectively in every state. Delaying the confirmation of strongly qualified, experienced judges takes a real-life toll on constituents and leads to backlogs of criminal cases – meaning there is every urgent reason for Republicans and Democrats to continue working together in good faith to staff the federal bench,” he wrote Monday. “What’s more, there is bipartisan precedent for exactly that: 55 nominees were confirmed during the equivalent period of the Trump Administration, after President Biden was elected, including 18 judges-15 of whom were confirmed with votes from one or more Senate Democrats. There is no excuse for choosing partisanship over enforcing the rule of law.”

Professor of law Steve Vladeck, an expert on the federal courts and constitutional law, writes: “During the lame-duck period after the 2020 election, Republicans confirmed a number of President Trump’s judicial nominees—including Judge Aileen Cannon.”

Wednesday will be Judge Cannon’s four-year anniversary on the federal bench.

READ MORE: ‘Tenfold Increase in Number of Deportations’: Trump Hands Stephen Miller Top Policy Post