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      Biden seeks term-defining wins in Georgia runoffs Trump called 'illegal'

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      Campaigning continued in Georgia on Saturday in two Senate runoff elections which will define much of Joe Biden’s first term in office.Regardless of Donald Trump’s bizarre New Year’s Day decision to call the runoffs “illegal and invalid”, the contests on Tuesday will decide control of the Senate and therefore how far Biden can reach on issues such as the pandemic, healthcare, taxation, energy and the environment.Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev Raphael Warnock must win to split the chamber 50/50. Kamala Harris, the vice-president-elect, would then act as tiebreaker as president of the Senate. Responding to that threat, Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue have placed themselves squarely behind Trump, making hugely exaggerated claims about the dangers their opponents supposedly pose.In Perdue’s and Loeffler’s telling, a Democratic Senate would “rubber stamp” a “socialist agenda”, from “ending private insurance” and “expanding the supreme court” to adopting a Green New Deal that would raise taxes by thousands each year.Besides misrepresenting the policy preferences of Biden and most Democratic senators, that characterization ignores the reality of a Senate in which centrist Democrats and Republicans are set for a key role.At one campaign stop this week, Ossoff said Perdue’s “ridiculous” attacks “blow my mind”. He also scoffed at the claim that his ideas, aligned closely with Biden, amount to a leftist lunge. But he agreed with his opponent on how much Georgia matters.“We have too much good work to do,” Ossoff said, “to be mired in gridlock and obstruction for the next few years.”Ossoff also made headlines this week with his response to a Fox News reporter about Loeffler’s claims that her opponent, Warnock – pastor of a church formerly led by Martin Luther King Jr – is “dangerous” and “radical”.“Here’s the bottom line,” Ossoff said. “Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman. Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman and so she is stooping to these vicious personal attacks to distract from the fact that she’s been campaigning with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.”The claim was misleading: Loeffler was pictured with a former member of the Klan but did not campaign with him. Loeffler responded by calling Ossoff “a pathological liar” and “a trust-fund socialist whose only job has been working for the Chinese Communist party in recent years”, a reference to payments to Ossoff’s media company from a Hong Kong conglomerate.Perdue entered quarantine this week after exposure to Covid-19. He and Loeffler must also contend with a deepening Republican split over Trump’s refusal to concede defeat in the presidential election.Trump has spread unfounded assertions of voter fraud and blasted Georgia Republicans including the governor, Brian Kemp, who have defended the elections process, attacks which led to his Friday night tweet about the legality of the runoffs. As Perdue and Loeffler have backed up Trump’s claims, some Republicans have expressed concern it could discourage loyalists from voting. Others are worried the GOP candidates have turned off moderates repelled by Trump.“No Republican is really happy with the situation we find ourselves in,” said Chip Lake, a longtime Georgia Republican consultant. “But sometimes when you play poker, you have to play the hand you’re dealt, and for us that starts with the president.”Trump will visit Georgia for a final rally with Loeffler on Monday evening, hours before polls open. It is unclear whether Perdue will attend.Democrats are fine with their opponents’ decision to run as Trump Republicans and use exaggerated attacks.“We talk about something like expanding Medicaid. We talk about expanding Pell grants” for low-income college students, Ossoff said at a recent stop in Marietta, north of Atlanta. “David Perdue denounces those things as socialism?”Ossoff noted Perdue’s claims that a Democratic Senate would abolish private health insurance. Ossoff and Warnock in fact back Biden’s proposal to add a federal insurance plan to private insurance exchanges.“I just want people to have the choice,” Ossoff said.Biden beat Trump by about 12,000 votes out of 5m in Georgia, making him the first Democrat to carry the state since 1992. His record vote total for a Democrat in the state was fueled by racially and ethnically diversifying metropolitan areas but also shifts in key Atlanta suburbs where white voters have historically leaned Republican.Yet Perdue landed within a few thousand votes of Trump’s total and led Ossoff by about 88,000. Republican turnout also surged in small towns and rural areas and Democrats disappointed down-ballot, failing to make expected gains.“We’ve won this race once already,” Perdue has said. His advisers think they can corral the narrow slice of swing voters by warning against handing Democrats control of the House, Senate and White House.Biden sold himself as a uniter and a seasoned legislative broker. But even a Democratic-held Senate would not give him everything he wants, as rules still require 60 votes to advance most major legislation. Biden must win over Republicans.A Democratic Senate would, however, clear a path for nominees to key posts, especially on the federal judiciary, and bring control of committees and floor action. A Senate led by current majority leader Mitch McConnell almost certainly would deny major legislative victories, as it did in Barack Obama’s tenure.Biden will travel to Atlanta on Monday to campaign with Ossoff and Warnock. Harris will campaign on Sunday in Savannah. In his last visit, Biden called Perdue and Loeffler “roadblocks” and urged Georgians “to vote for two United States senators who know how to say the word ‘yes’ and not just ‘no’.” More

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      The Guardian view on liberal Christians: is this their moment? | Editorial

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      “No one is saved alone,” writes Pope Francis in Let Us Dream, a short book of Covid-related reflections published last month. Those words carry an obvious Christian resonance. But the meaning that the pope intends to convey is primarily secular. The pandemic, he believes, has underlined our shared vulnerability and mutual dependency. By shocking us out of everyday indifference and egotism, our present troubles can open up the space for a new spirit of fraternity. A fresh emphasis on looking out for each other, claims the pope, can become the theme of a more generous and caring post-pandemic politics.Let Us Dream is a pastoral, spiritual book that aspires to address a lay audience as well as a religious one. In its emphasis on civic solidarity, tolerance, concern for the poor and the environment, it is also the latest attempt by Pope Francis to shift the dial of 21st-century Christianity away from the culture wars that have consumed it.There is an obvious temptation to respond wryly: “Good luck with that.” In a number of high-profile ways, 2020 was another depressing year for liberal-minded Christians. The Polish Catholic church worked hand in glove with the state in an attempt to effectively ban abortion and trample over LGBTQ+ rights. The strong disapproval of a majority of Poles, who have no wish to live in a theocracy, cut no ice. In neighbouring Hungary, the Reformed, Lutheran and Catholic churches kept stumm as Viktor Orbán’s government continued to bully minorities in the name of “illiberal Christianity”. During the lead-up to November’s US presidential election, Donald Trump’s cynical weaponisation of the abortion debate helped ensure strong Christian backing for the most profane, religiously illiterate president in the country’s history. And this week, Pope Francis himself indicated his disapproval of the legalisation of abortion in his native Argentina.But this stark summary of the church at odds with the liberal world does not tell the whole story. In Britain, as elsewhere, Christian churches, alongside mosques and synagogues, played a frontline role in the community activism that kept people and families afloat during months of acute uncertainty and hardship. It is from that wellspring of fellow feeling and altruism, the importance of which is suddenly front and centre in our lives, that Let Us Dream believes a “new humanism” can emerge. For those who share that aspiration, whether secular or religious, there are genuine grounds for hope in 2021.A liberal CatholicThe election to the White House of Joe Biden, a Democrat who is also a practising Catholic, is the best news liberal Christians have had for a long time. In a book published last month, the conservative Australian cardinal George Pell said Mr Trump was “a bit of a barbarian, but in some important ways he’s ‘our’ (Christian) barbarian”. The end of that cynically transactional relationship between Mr Trump’s White House and the religious right signals new possibilities. In his victory speech, Mr Biden quoted from Ecclesiastes, saying that for a divided America, “it was a time to heal”. When he has discussed his faith, the president-elect has tended to talk about altruism, decency and personal integrity, steering clear of provocative dividing lines.Mr Biden has backed access to abortion and same-sex marriage. He will, as a result, be relentlessly targeted by conservative Catholic critics and evangelicals. The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, José Gomez, has convened a working group to address the “difficult and complex” situation of dealing with a liberal Catholic in the White House. But the Catholic vote was split evenly between Mr Biden and Mr Trump. And, crucially, Pope Francis is likely to have the new president’s back.This relationship could constitute an important new axis of liberal influence in the west. After a recent phone call between the two, a statement from Mr Biden’s transition team said the president-elect “expressed his desire to work together on the basis of a shared belief in the dignity and equality of all humankind, on issues such as caring for the marginalised and the poor, addressing the crisis of climate change and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities”. This was to more or less tick off the list of priorities the pope has attempted to set, while under constant assault from religious conservatives. The disruption of the recent alliance between Christianity and rightwing populism carries significant implications not only for America, but for the battle against global poverty, the climate emergency and the migration crisis.Fraternity as the new frontierMr Biden’s election is not the only hopeful sign for Christians who long for their leaders to look beyond the narrow preoccupation with reproductive rights and sexuality. Last year was marked by two significant theological documents, one from the eastern church and one from the west. Towards a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church, published during Lent, is a radical clarion call for Orthodox Christians to engage with deepening inequalities in developed societies, and to confront wealthy nations with their moral obligations to refugees. The tone is set by the opening words of the text: “Our spiritual lives … cannot fail to be social lives.” Endorsed by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox church, the document recalls that “[the] early and Byzantine church had a bold voice on social justice”. This, it states, must be revived and renewed. Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All), was written in the same spirit. Ideas of fraternity and friendship are developed as a necessary complement to the familiar political categories of liberty and equality. The argument is summed up in Let Us Dream, where the pope writes: “Without the ‘we’ of a people, of a family, of institutions, of a society that transcends the ‘I’ of individual interests, life … becomes a battle for supremacy between factions and interests.”Intriguingly, variations on this theme have been explored in a string of recent publications, both secular and religious. In his valedictory work Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, the late chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, criticises the modern priority of “I” over “we”. Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s The Upswing and Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit both attempt to map out a civic territory that avoids the twin dangers of selfish individualism and illiberal populism.In recent years, Christian leaders have too often been silent, complicit or cravenly proactive, as the Bible has been deployed as a weapon in conservative culture wars. The image of Trump marching through teargassed streets to brandish a bible outside a Washington church encapsulated a kind of capitulation. But in the new year, liberal Christians have grounds for cautious optimism. In the necessary project of carving out a new space for a less polarised, more fraternal public square, they have a vital role to play. More

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      Could Asian Americans be crucial to swinging Georgia's Senate races?

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      [embedded content]
      Stephanie Cho remembers a time when she could walk the halls of the Georgia state capitol and see just two Asian Americans: the Republican state representative Byung J Pak and a member of his staff.
      She had recently moved to Atlanta from Los Angeles, in 2013, and was “shocked” by how few Asian Americans were involved in Georgia politics. Campaigns, Cho said, made little effort to engage Asian American voters, despite their growing presence in the state, and political leaders did not seem to grasp the potential voting power of this electorate.
      “When you think about California, what it was like 30 or 40 years ago, that’s Georgia,” said Cho, who is now the executive director of the civil rights advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. “It’s on a trajectory of change.”
      Though Asian Americans comprise only about 4% of Georgia’s population – a far smaller share than in places like California – they have emerged as an increasingly influential electoral force in this politically divided, southern swing state.
      Historic turnout among Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters – who make up the fastest-growing segment of Georgia’s electorate – helped Joe Biden become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1992. According to national exit polls, nearly two-thirds of Asian American and Pacific Islander voters cast their ballot for Biden.
      By some estimates, voter participation among Asian Americans in Georgia nearly doubled from 2016 to 2020 – a testament, Cho said, to the years-long voter engagement and mobilization efforts led by a new generation of Asian American organizers and activists.
      The next time she visits the state capitol, there will be six Asian Americans serving in the Georgia legislature, including five Democrats.
      “When no one was looking, we really changed things in Georgia,” Cho said.
      Now Democrats hope to replicate their success among Asian Americans in a pair of runoff elections on 5 January that will determine control of the US Senate. The campaigns for Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock say they view the AAPI community as critical to winning their races. Both teams have hired AAPI constituency directors to lead multilingual and multicultural outreach programs, that includes campaign visits to AAPI-owned small businesses and advertising in ethnic media.
      “We are absolutely crucial in this race,” said Anjali Enjeti, the co-founder of the Georgia chapter of the group They See Blue, which mobilizes south Asian Democrats. “We turned out in 2020 at a rate higher – much higher – than we have historically turned out and we can absolutely help bring it home again.”
      Though no single voting bloc can take credit for turning the state blue in November, as many as 30,000 Asian Americans voters in Georgia cast ballots for the first time in the November presidential election, nearly three times Biden’s 11,000-vote victory.
      High turnout among Black, Latino and young voters, as well as a rejection of Trump by white, college-educated suburban voters who traditionally lean Republican, were also key. Many organizers, including Enjeti, credited the work of Stacey Abrams, the 2018 candidate for governor who founded a voter registration group called the New Georgia Project, and other Black women organizers in the state who helped mobilize and engage new and low-propensity voters in minority communities.
      Four years ago, Sam Park defeated a three-term Republican incumbent to become the first Asian American Democrat elected to the Georgia general assembly.
      The son of Korean immigrants, Park got his start in politics working for Abrams when she was minority leader of the Georgia House. When he decided to run for office himself, he said targeting Asian American voters was not a sophisticated campaign strategy but simply made “common sense”.
      It worked – and since then Park has helped Georgia Democrats engage the state’s AAPI voters. In 2020, he was the Georgia chair of Young Asian Americans for Biden.
      In recent weeks, Georgia has attracted some of the biggest names in American politics, including the president, the former president and the president-elect.
      Kamala Harris, whose late mother immigrated to California from India, will campaign again in Georgia on Sunday and Andrew Yang, who is Taiwanese American and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, spent time in the state mobilizing Asian Americans ahead of the elections next month.
      But Democrats aren’t the only ones courting Georgia’s Asian American voters.
      Congresswomen-elect Young Kim and Michelle Steel of California visited Georgia this month to rally Asian American voters in support of the Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. Kim and Steel, who became two of the first three Korean Americans elected to Congress, both defeated incumbent Democrats to reclaim pieces of Orange county that Republicans lost in the “blue wave” of 2018.
      Advocacy groups say they are redoubling their efforts in the final days before polls close, knocking on doors, circulating polling information and providing language assistance.
      “It’s really important to make sure that people understand what’s at stake,” Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, the executive director of the Asian American Advocacy Fund, which works to elect progressive candidates. “Not just in the political dynamics of flipping the US Senate, because I don’t necessarily think that resonates as a message – but what we could achieve if we help elect two Democratic senators from Georgia.”
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      Congressman-elect Kai Kahele represents an 'awakened generation' of Native Hawaiians

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      Kai Kahele had one ambition growing up in Hawaii, and that was to fly airplanes. He achieved that goal by the age of 19, and was happy working as a military and commercial pilot when a family tragedy propelled him into the world of politics.Kahele, an indigenous Hawaiian, was appointed to the state senate in 2016 after the sudden death of his father senator Gil Kahele, 73, a progressive stalwart in the Democrat party for over 40 years. Two day before he died, Kahele’s father had asked him to consider following in his footsteps.“Five years ago I was a working dad, living my dream as a pilot and raising my young family when things changed overnight. I grew up immersed in the progressive values of the Democrat party, but this is not something I planned to do,” Kahele told the Guardian. “I think my dad knew that if there was someone who was going to continue his legacy, and be a leader in the Native Hawaiian community and for the indigenous peoples in our country, that his son was ready. And here I am.”On Sunday, Kahele, 46, will be sworn into Congress as part of the most diverse Democrat freshman classes in US history, with newly elected women outnumbering men two to one. He’ll also be among a record-breaking five Native Americans – three Democrats and two Republicans – in Congress. It was going to be six, until New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, was appointed as secretary to the interior by Joe Biden.[Representation] … sends a message to indigenous peoples around the world that their voices matter“I’m elated because congresswoman Haaland brings to a very important cabinet level position a cultural and historical perspective that’s been missing. Indigenous peoples in this country share a similar history, a history of colonization, oppression and marginalization, and whose economic benefit and social fabric is unfortunately directly dependent on the federal government. I feel like we’re going to be able to do great things for our indigenous communities.”They will have their work cut out, but for the first time many in Indian country are hopeful of meaningful change or at the very least, the end to decades of treaty violations by the US government which has had devastating consequences for life expectancy, political participation and economic opportunities for Native Americans.Currently there are 574 federally recognised sovereign tribal nations located across 35 states, and according to the 2010 census, 5.2 million people or about 2% of the US population identifies as American Indian or Alaskan Native – descendants of those who survived US government policies to kill, remove or assimilate indigenous peoples.In Hawaii, historical land grabs, cultural violations and economic abuses perpetrated by the US government in cahoots with western businessmen are at the root of some of the most difficult and polarizing issues today, according to Kahele. This includes the contested decision to construct a huge telescope on Mauna Kea, the most sacred mountain to Native Hawaiians, as well as water rights amid growing shortages linked to overdevelopment. Native Hawaiians are not currently recognised by the US government as sovereign indigenous people.“We have an awakened generation of Native Hawaiians that know their past, they understand and speak their language and they’re not turning back… People are split about how to right the wrongs, whether it’s through sovereignty or federal recognition, and part of my role is trying to figure out what the future path looks like. Having a voice in Congress and representation at the table is important.”Representation is also important symbolically, argues Kahele. “It sends a message to indigenous peoples around the world that their voices matter, that their history, language and culture matter, and that you’ll have people fighting for that in the United States of America’s Congress. We can be an example for other countries dealing with these same issues.”VillageKahele was born in 1974 in Miloli’i, an off-the-grid fishing community on the southern tip of the island of Hawaii where households generate electricity through solar panels and collect rain for water. It’s one of the last surviving villages where pre-western migrants from China and Taiwan are believed to have settled.Before politics Kahele’s father Gil was a marine who met his future wife, a flight attendant, on a Hawaiian beach. Kahele and his two siblings grew up with three cousins who were orphaned by a drunk driver.“My dad conveyed to me the experiences he had in the military as a Native Hawaiian travelling through the south in the 1960s seeing segregation and racism through his own eyes. My mum took us on random trips all over the world, made sure we knew there was a bigger world than Hawaii, and would often take me into the cockpit which piqued my interest at a very early age.”He’ll join Congress as a lieutenant colonel with the Hawaii air national guard and will continue to fly part time with Hawaiian Airlines. (His wife Maria is a flight attendant, and they have three daughters, aged four, six and 16.)Kahele served as the state senate majority leader and chaired the committee on land and water amid growing demands from Native communities for environmental justice. The climate crisis is also omnipresent in Hawaii, and islands across the world, as rising sea levels and temperatures are devastating coral reefs and fish stocks, as well as threatening the existence of coastal communities.“A few metres of sea could wipe out Waikiki, the economic engine of Hawaii. On islands across the Pacific, most of the population lives near the ocean, around the shoreline you have the roads and homes on the verge of collapsing. We need to reimagine and rethink how our communities will look like in the future… when you need to use natural resources to feed your families, you need to understand the changes in climate and environment to survive. That’s where I come from.”He’s hopeful that America will start to take concrete steps forwards after four years of backtracking. “Joe Biden’s climate plan is definitely 100% better than the Trump plan. Just the fact that we’ll re-enter Paris is huge, so is having climate change champion Deb Haaland at the cabinet level and leading an agency that will make critical decisions.”The geographical isolation of Hawaii, which is situated 2,500 miles from the mainland, has somewhat protected islanders from the worst of the Covid health crisis. But, the economic fallout has been devastating, and has renewed questions about the over-reliance on tourism – especially as natural resources like beaches and clean water are under threat from the climate crisis, over development and environmental degradation.Amid mass layoffs, the pandemic has increased food insecurity by 50% in Hawaii, with a quarter of people currently struggling with hunger; Native Hawaiians are disproportionately affected.“Covid has been devastating to our economy which lives and breathes almost exclusively from tourism, and it’s been detrimental to the social fabric of our community, exposing many of the deep known issues in Hawaii. We need to diversify, we need to be more sustainable.“A lot of people are hurting and face great uncertainty and fear about the future. I see a migration of people leaving Hawaii for the mainland [for work], the brain drain of teachers, doctors, firefighters doesn’t help our economy or social structure.”Kahele is firmly on the party’s left, an advocate for the Green New Deal, Medicare for all and universal preschool education – policies dismissed as radical by many on the right. He’s been assigned to the congressional transportation and infrastructure committee and hopes that they will pass a transformational green package advocated by lawmakers like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.“Why do we have to label these changes as radical, this is where we need to go as a country, in order to invest in every young child, and to rebuild and strengthen our country … I can’t wait to say a hui hou – which in Hawaii means see you later – to President Trump on January 20th. It’s time to move on.” More

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      in Elections

      Pelosi rebukes McConnell for saying 'no realistic path' for $2,000 relief stimulus bill – video

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      The Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, says the bill that would direct $2,000 coronavirus relief payments to Americans has ‘no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate’. After Donald Trump and Democrats pushed for larger relief cheques, McConnell said he would not be ‘bullied’ by Democrats into quickly approving the measure. House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, criticised McConnell for adding a delay to the payments.’These Republicans in the Senate seem to have an endless tolerance for other people’s sadness,’ she said
      Mitch McConnell says ‘no realistic path’ for $2,000 relief checks bill More

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      Mitch McConnell says 'no realistic path' for $2,000 relief checks bill

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      Donald Trump’s demand for $2,000 relief checks to Americans struggling financially with the pandemic was all but dead after Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday that a proposal from Democrats had “no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate”.Declaring that he would not be “bullied” by Democrats into quickly approving the measure, McConnell effectively denied a final request for legislative action by the president in the waning days of his administration.“We just approved almost a trillion dollars in aid a few days ago,” McConnell said, referring to the passage of a massive $900bn stimulus package that included $600 direct payments to most American adults. “It struck a balance between broad support for all kinds of households and a lot more targeted relief for those who need help most.”Trump, who remained mostly on the sidelines during the negotiations, nearly derailed the agreement when he demanded Congress more than triple the size of the direct payments from $600 to $2,000. He ultimately relented and signed the bill into law on Sunday. But he has continued to press Congress to act, writing on Twitter that “$600 IS NOT ENOUGH”. He has also called Republicans “pathetic” for failing to act, and suggested their inaction amounted to a political “death wish”.“$2000 ASAP!” Trump demanded again on Wednesday before McConnell appeared to extinguish the possibility.Democrats have eagerly embraced Trump’s call to bolster the payments and on Monday, the House approved a bill that would send $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans. But on Tuesday, McConnell prevented Democrats from bringing the House bill to the floor for consideration, instead offering a vague assurance that Senate would “begin the process” of discussing the $2,000 checks.He said the measure would be considered alongside with unrelated items that would almost certainly doom the legislation, including an investigation of election security to root out voter fraud, which Trump has baselessly claimed tainted the presidential vote count, and the removal of legal protections for social media platforms.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday called McConnell’s plan to tie the checks to the election security and social media provisions a “way to kill the bill”.“There is no other game in town but the House bill,” Schumer said in a floor speech, imploring McConnell to allow a vote on the House bill. “The only way, the only way, to get the American people the $2,000 checks they need is to pass the House bill and to pass it now.”When he finished, Schumer again attempted to bring the House bill to the floor for a vote on Wednesday, but McConnell again objected, dismissing it as a Democratic proposal led by the House.But the effort is not only backed by Democrats. Weeks ago, progressive senator Bernie Sanders joined forces with conservative senator Josh Hawley to demand Congress include direct payments as part of any bipartisan stimulus agreement. After the checks were adopted, they continued to push Congress to dramatically increase the size of the checks.Trump’s support has further shifted the calculus among Republicans, who previously demanded that Democrats pare back their coronavirus relief proposal to keep costs under $1tn. Loath to defy the president, many Republican senators are now dropping their initial concerns about the cost of the package and embracing his call for bigger payments.Georgia senators Davide Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are running in competitive re-election races next week that will determine control of the Senate, said they support increasing the size of the checks. And 44 Republicans joined the vast majority of the Democratic caucus to approve the House bill on Monday.As lawmakers continued to spar over the payments, the treasury department said Americans should begin to receive $600 deposits in their bank accounts as early as Tuesday evening, while paper checks would be mailed out starting Wednesday. More

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      Biden and Harris to campaign in Georgia as Trump calls on its governor to quit

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      [embedded content]
      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will travel to Georgia to campaign for next week’s high-stakes Senate runoff elections, it was announced on Wednesday, as Donald Trump called on the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, to resign.
      For weeks, Trump has been attacking Kemp for his refusal to overturn the results of Georgia’s presidential election, a state he won in 2016 and narrowly lost to Biden in 2020, and on Wednesday went as far as to call on his fellow Republican to resign.
      “@BrianKempGA should resign from office,” Trump wrote in a tweet that encouraged supporters to watch a broadcast of a hearing on purported election irregularities. “He is an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG! Also won the other Swing States.”
      Kemp, long considered a staunch ally of the president, has refused to embrace Trump’s meritless accusations that the state’s vote count was tainted. Earlier this month, Kemp recertified Georgia’s 16 electoral votes for Biden after multiple recounts affirmed Biden’s victory in the state.
      Despite dozens of lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign, they produced no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in Georgia or any other state. Yet Trump’s insistence that the presidential vote was fraudulent has rattled some Republicans in the state who fear his unfounded claims may depress turnout among his supporters ahead of runoff elections, scheduled for 5 January.
      The runoffs will determine which party controls the Senate.
      “I love the Great State of Georgia, but the people who run it, from the Governor, @BrianKempGA, to the Secretary of State, are a complete disaster and don’t have a clue, or worse,” Trump wrote in a pair of tweets on Tuesday night. “Nobody can be this stupid. Just allow us to find the crime, and turn the state Republican….”
      He also made reference to a conspiracy theory that claims the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has a brother named Ron who works for a Chinese tech firm, which purportedly explains his refusal to accept Trump’s unfounded claims about voter fraud in the state. The man is not related to Raffensperger.
      Trump will hold a rally with Georgia’s Republican senators in Dalton on Monday, setting up a split screen with Biden, who will campaign for the Democratic challengers, the Rev Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, in Atlanta on the same day. On Sunday, Harris will appear with the Democrats in Savannah, while Vice-President Mike Pence has made frequent visits to the state on behalf of the Republican candidates. More

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      Georgia Senate runoff elections: how they work and why they matter

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      On 5 January the US state of Georgia will vote, again, on who to send to the Senate.The control of the Senate is up for grabs, and thus the prospects for the Biden administration – at least for the next two years. As millions of dollars and hundreds of campaigners descend on the state, here is an explainer about what is happening.What is at stake?Two seats are up for grabs. Republicans hold 50 of the 100 seats, and Democrats hold 48. There are 46 formally party-aligned and two independents – Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont – who caucus with the Democrats. When there is a 50-50 tie, the deciding vote is cast by the vice president. That will be Democrat Kamala Harris after the Biden administration is sworn in on 20 January.If Democrats can win both seats they will control the Senate.A Senate majority is crucial in deciding a range of legislative changes, cabinet appointments, potential presidential impeachments and nominations to the supreme court. Republicans have controlled the Senate since 2014.The Democrats have a majority in the House, so a Democratic Senate majority would make Joe Biden’s next two years much easier. Conversely a Republican-controlled Senate under majority leader Mitch McConnell would be able to block much of his agenda, just as it did with former president Barack Obama’s. Biden has a history of attempting compromise across the aisle and could try to entice one or more Republicans on individual votes, but given McConnell’s history of obstructionism that seems a distant prospect. With so much hanging on the result, money has been pouring in to the state to support both sides. More than US$400m was spent on political ads by the middle of December, most going to the two Republicans.Today in FocusThe Georgia Senate runoffSorry your browser does not support audio – but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2020/05/05-61553-gnl.fw.200505.jf.ch7DW.mp300:00:0000:00:00Who are the candidates?Both Georgia seats are contested between one Democratic candidate and one Republican.One race pitches Republican David Perdue, incumbent senator since 2015, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former journalist, who is only 33.Their battle has been vitriolic at times, Ossoff repeatedly calling Perdue a crook and referring to investigations into Perdue’s alleged insider trading.But Perdue has mostly not risen to the bait, and he declined to meet Ossoff in their scheduled TV debate earlier this month, leaving Ossoff to make his points on an empty podium.The other, much more colourful, race is between Republican Kelly Loeffler, a seriously wealthy former businesswoman, and Democrat Rev Raphael Warnock.Warnock, bidding to become Georgia’s first black senator, is a pastor at the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King held the same position. A long-time civil rights campaigner, he is a powerful orator in the tradition of King, and a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement.As a result he has been denounced as a “radical liberal” by his opponent, Loeffler, at every possible opportunity, but has responded in disarming campaign ads by accusing Loeffler of having nothing positive to say about herself and stressing how much he loves puppies.Loeffler ran into controversy when she criticised players from the WNBA team she owns – the Atlanta Dream – over their support for Black Lives Matter, saying BLM had “Marxist foundations”.Loeffler is also technically an incumbent – she was appointed an interim senator on 6 January after former Republican senator Johnny Isakson resigned due to ill health.Why are they runoffs?Georgia state law requires runoffs in both elections because no candidate in either seat reached 50% in the November election.For the Loeffler-Warnock seat, the vacancy was created by the resignation of a sitting senator.This meant the November vote was contested by 20 people, in what is known as a “blanket” or “jungle” primary, which is to say it was almost always going to a runoff, with the top two from the first round going through. In that blanket primary, Loeffler also faced strong competition from moderate Republican congressman Doug Collins, and Warnock competed against a range of Democrats.Warnock topped the blanket primary with 32.9%, Loeffler came second with 25.9% and Collins came third with 19.95%. The top two – Warnock and Loeffler – then advanced to the runoff.In the other seat, contested by Perdue and Ossoff, the 2.32% of the vote won by Libertarian party candidate Shane T Hazel was enough to ensure that neither main party candidate reached 50% in a tight race: Perdue received 49.73% and Ossoff 47.95%.Who is likely to win?A Democrat has not won a Senate race in Georgia in 20 years, so the odds of winning two at the same time do not look great.However, Biden won the state in the November presidential election, the first time in 30 years a Democratic candidate had done so.How the outcome of the presidential race will affect the runoffs is the great unknown. Will traditionally Republican voters who rejected Donald Trump return to the party to ensure the Biden agenda is tempered by Republican control of the Senate? Or will Trump’s insistence on continuing to campaign in Georgia on the basis that the election was a fraud – and tying the Senate candidates to that cause – again motivate Democratic voters to turn out in high numbers?As in the presidential election, voting is not compulsory – so turnout will be a huge concern for both camps.A few more younger voters will be eligible to vote in January. Anyone who turns 18 on or before 5 January is eligible to vote, according to the Georgia Voter Guide. Registration to vote closed on 7 December.What do the polls say?By 24 December the poll average compiled by FiveThirtyEight had Perdue ahead of Ossoff by 0.5%, but Warnock leading Loeffler by 0.6%. Real Clear Politics on 22 December gave the Republicans slightly better figures, with Perdue up by 1% and Loeffler by 0.2%, but the numbers for the Democrats were improving over the past week or so with both agencies.Both polling outfits came under sustained criticism over the presidential election when they drastically underestimated Republican support in some states.When will we know the result?It depends how close the races are. The first Ossoff-Perdue race from November was so close that the result was not known for three days, but under most circumstances the result should be apparent on the night. More