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      Trump's Republicans have dumped Lincoln – they're the Confederacy now | Lloyd Green

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      On Wednesday, the Republicans’ transition to the party of the Confederacy will be complete. A day after Georgia’s runoff elections, at least a dozen lawmakers in the Senate and more than half of the party’s House membership will seek to overturn the results of the 2020 election and disenfranchise the majority of US voters. A coup attempt in all but name, this is how democracy dies.Sadly, a statement issued on Saturday by seven sitting senators and four senators-elect dispelled any doubts about the nexus between the end of the US civil war, more than 150 years ago, and Donald Trump’s desperate attempt to cling to power. Predictably, America’s racial divide again stands front and center.After regurgitating for the umpteenth time unproven and unsubstantiated charges of electoral fraud, the senators invoked the election of 1876. Back then, the Democrats contested the outcome, conceding after the Republicans agreed to halt Reconstruction.As framed by Ted Cruz and his posse, “the most direct precedent” for their actions “arose in 1877, following serious allegations of fraud and illegal conduct in the Hayes-Tilden presidential race”. In their telling, “elections in three states” were “alleged to have been conducted illegally”. Left unsaid is that after the end of Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the toxic legacy of “separate but equal” followed.To these Republicans the right to vote is only for some of the people, some of the timeTo quote Mississippi’s William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Senators from states that were part of the Confederacy, or territory where slaveholding was legal, provide the ballast for Cruz’s demands. At least one senator each from Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas is on board.Apparently, Trump’s defeat at the hands of Joe Biden, formerly vice-president to the first black man in the White House, and Kamala Harris, a black woman, is too much for too many to bear. Said differently, to these Republicans the right to vote is only for some of the people, some of the time – those people being this president’s supporters.Trump’s equivocation over Charlottesville, his debate shoutout to the Proud Boys and his worship of dead Confederate generals are of the same piece. The vestiges of an older and crueler social order are to be maintained, at all costs.Likewise, the reluctance of Trump appointees to the federal judiciary to affirm the validity of Brown v Board of Education, the supreme court ruling that said school segregation was unconstitutional, is a feature not a bug.As for the Declaration of Independence’s pronouncement that “All men are created equal”, and the constitution’s guaranty of equal protection under law, they are inconveniences to be discarded when confronted by dislocating demographics.“Stand back and stand by,” indeed.Since the civil war, there has always been a southern party, frequently echoing strains of the old, slave-owning south. Practically, that has meant hostility towards civil rights coupled with wariness towards modernity.To be sure, southern did not automatically equal neo-Confederate, but the distinction could easily get lost. And to be sure, the Democrats were initially the party of the south. During debate over the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Republicans gave Lyndon Johnson the votes he needed. Not anymore.Cruz and Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator who kicked off the attempt to deny the electoral college result, are the products of places like Harvard, Stanford and Yale. John C Calhoun, the seventh vice-president, argued in favor of slavery and the right of states to secede. He went to Yale too. Joseph Goebbels had a doctorate from Heidelberg. An elite degree does not confer wisdom automatically.For the record, Cruz also clerked for a supreme court chief justice, William Rehnquist. Hawley did so for John Roberts.On Sunday, as the new Congress was being sworn in, a recording emerged of Trump unsuccessfully browbeating Georgia’s secretary of state into finding “11,780 votes, which is one more than we have”. From the sound of things, Trump’s fear of prosecutors and creditors, waiting for him to leave the White House, takes precedence over electoral integrity.Back in May, after Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, predicted 240,000 deaths from Covid, and as armed protests to public health measures grew, an administration insider conveyed that Trump’s America was becoming a “bit” like the “late” Weimar Republic. Eight months later, the death toll is past 350,000 and climbing unabated.Come nightfall on 6 January, the party of Abraham Lincoln will be no more. Instead, the specters of Jim Crow and autocracy will flicker. Messrs Trump, Cruz and Hawley can take a collective bow. More

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      'I just want 11,780 votes': Trump pressed Georgia to overturn Biden victory

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      In an hour-long phone call on Saturday, Donald Trump pressed Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there in the election the president refuses to concede.The Washington Post obtained a tape of the “extraordinary hour-long call”, which Trump acknowledged on Twitter.Amid widespread outrage including calls for a second impeachment, Bob Bauer, a senior Biden adviser, said: “We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place.”The Post published the full call.“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”Raffensperger is a Republican who has become a bête noire among Trump supporters for repeatedly saying Biden’s win in his state was fair. In one of a number of parries, he said: “Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”He also insisted: “There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”Trump’s contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tapeTrump did not win Georgia, which went Democratic for the first time since 1992. Its result has been certified. Attempts to pressure Republicans in other battleground states have failed, as have the vast majority of challenges to results in court.Despite promised objections from at least 12 Republican senators and a majority of the House GOP, Biden’s electoral college victory will be ratified by Congress on Wednesday. The Democrat will be inaugurated as the 46th president on 20 January. Trump will then leave the White House – where he remained, tweeting angrily, all weekend.Edward B Foley, an Ohio State law professor, told the Post the call was “‘inappropriate and contemptible’ and should prompt moral outrage”. Trump’s behaviour was “already tripping the emergency meter,” he added. “So we were at 12 on a scale of one to 10, and now we’re at 15.”In an email to the Guardian, University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said: “The conduct that the press has reported might place Trump in legal jeopardy after Biden is inaugurated.“For example, if the justice department or US attorneys believe that Trump violated federal law or if local prosecutors in states, such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump may have engaged in similar behaviour with state or local election officials, believe that Trump violated state election laws, the federal or state prosecutors could file suit against Trump.”Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, went further, calling for Trump to be impeached a second time, even though he has little more than two weeks left in office.“The president of the United States has been caught on tape trying to rig a presidential election,” Bookbinder said. “This is a low point in American history and unquestionably impeachable conduct. It is incontrovertible and devastating.“When the Senate acquitted President Trump for abusing his powers to try to get himself re-elected [in February 2020, regarding approaches to Ukraine for dirt on Biden], we worried that he would grow more brazen in his attempts to wrongly and illegally keep himself in power. He has … Congress must act immediately.”From Congress, in a tweet, Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, said: “Trump’s contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tape.”The lead prosecutor at Trump’s Senate impeachment trial last year added: “Pressuring an election official to ‘find’ the votes so he can win is potentially criminal, and another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him. We will not.”Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat widely expected to be elected House speaker for a fourth term, set out her strategy for the election certification in a memo to colleagues.“Over the years,” she wrote, “we have experienced many challenges in the House, but no situation matches the Trump presidency and the Trump disrespect for the will of the people.”Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman from Illinois, tweeted: “This is absolutely appalling. To every member of Congress considering objecting to the election results, you cannot – in light of this – do so with a clean conscience.”Stacey Abrams is laughing about you. She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock’White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer, were also on the call, during which Trump ran through a laundry list of debunked claims regarding supposed electoral fraud and called Raffensperger a “child”, “either dishonest or incompetent” and a “schmuck”.Characteristically, Trump also threatened legal action.“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” he said. “You know, that’s a criminal offence. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan [Germany], your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”Referring to runoffs on Tuesday that will decide control of the Senate, Trump said Georgia had “a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president – you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam.“Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. OK? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, seeking to beat Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, have ranged themselves behind Trump. But Georgia Republicans fear his attacks could suppress his own party’s turnout as Democrats work to boost their own.Early voting has reached unprecedented levels and on Sunday, former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams told ABC’s This Week: “What we’re so excited about is that we haven’t stopped reaching those voters. Millions of contacts have been made, thousands of new registrations have been held. We know that at least 100,000 people who did not vote in the general election are now voting in this election.”Trump told Raffensperger: “Stacey Abrams is laughing about you. She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock.’”Trump also said he knew the call wasn’t “going anywhere”. Raffensperger ended the conversation.On Twitter on Sunday, Trump said Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”Twitter duly applied a standard disclaimer: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”Raffensperger also responded: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.” More

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      New Congress sworn in as Georgia runoffs loom and Trump runs amok

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      Congress convened for its 117th session on Sunday, swearing in lawmakers amid extraordinary political turmoil as Republicans worked to overturn Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump, crucial Senate runoffs in Georgia loomed and the coronavirus surge imposed severe limits on familiar Capitol ceremonies.The Democrat Nancy Pelosi was set to be re-elected as House speaker. But most attention was focused on the Senate, where Mitch McConnell could be carrying out his final acts as Republican majority leader.If Democrats John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock unseat Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in Georgia on Tuesday, the chamber will split 50-50. As vice-president, Kamala Harris would then hold a deciding vote, boosting Biden’s hopes of legislative success.In an extraordinarily acrimonious campaign, early voting has shattered runoff records, with 3m ballots cast. African American turnout, critical to the Democrats’ chances, has been robust: about a third of ballots have come from self-identified Black voters, up from around 27% in the November contests which did not produce conclusive winners.On Sunday Stacey Abrams, the defeated Democrat in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election who now advocates for voting rights, told ABC’s This Week her party “did very well in vote by mail, we did very well in early vote, but we know election day is going to be the likely high-turnout day for Republicans, so we need Democrats who haven’t cast their ballots to turn out.“What we’re so excited about is that we haven’t stopped reaching those voters. Millions of contacts have been made, thousands of new registrations have been held. We know that at least 100,000 people who did not vote in the general election are now voting in this election.”Harris was to campaign in Georgia on Sunday, with Biden following on Monday. Trump has alarmed Republicans with attacks on GOP state officials and the integrity of the runoffs, as part of his baseless claims of electoral fraud in November. In a bombshell report, the Washington Post detailed a Saturday call in which Trump pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn the presidential result, saying a failure to do so could damage Republican chances in the Senate runoffs.Nonetheless, on Monday Trump will rally in support of Loeffler and Perdue.Perdue continues to quarantine after contact with a Covid-19 infected person. Nonetheless, the four candidates have been at each others’ throats.On Fox News Sunday, Loeffler, a keen Trump ally, aired allegations at Warnock regarding a child abuse investigation and domestic violence and continued to deny his claims she enriched herself in stock dealings following private Covid-19 briefings.“Why has he refused to denounce Marxism and socialism?” Loeffler said. “He’s attacked our police officers calling them gangsters, thugs and bullies, he said ‘You can’t serve God and the military’, he’s praised Fidel Castro [and] Karl Marx.”Warnock and Ossoff have seized on allegations of stock-dealing impropriety by Perdue, who dumped assets damaged by the pandemic and bought cheap stock that Covid-19 restrictions then caused to soar in value.In contests in which the Black vote is so important, race has also assumed a central role. Warnock is senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr once preached. Loeffler has run attack ads using pieces of Warnock’s sermons.“The Republican attack is not just against Warnock, it’s against the Black church and the Black religious experience,” the Rev Timothy McDonald III, pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta and assistant pastor of Ebenezer from 1978 to 1984, told Reuters.McDonald described Warnock’s views as consistent with the church’s opposition to racism, police brutality, poverty and militarism.“I don’t care what you think about Warnock,” he said. “We’ve got to defend our church, our preaching, or prophetic tradition, our community involvement and engagement. We’re going to defend that.”Loeffler said in a tweet last month she was not attacking the church. “We simply exposed your record in your own words,” she wrote.Ossoff courted controversy when he recently accused Loeffler of “campaigning with a Klansman”. In fact Loeffler posed, she said unknowingly, with a former member of the far-right group.Asked on CNN’s State of the Union if it was “important for candidates to tell the truth”, Ossoff said: “It is. And it’s even more distressing that this isn’t an isolated incident.“Kelly Loeffler has repeatedly posed for photographs and been seen campaigning alongside radical white supremacists. And I believe they’re drawn to her campaign, because her campaign has consisted almost entirely of racist attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and on the Black church.“…And it’s happening at the same time that Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue and Georgia Republicans are mounting a vicious assault on voting rights in Georgia, lawsuit after lawsuit to disenfranchise black voters, purge the rolls, remove ballot drop boxes.“And I believe that one of the reasons we’re seeing such record-shattering turnout … is that Georgians are defying those efforts to rip away their voting rights and standing up and saying, ‘We’re going to make our voices heard.’”Developments in Washington have also touched the Georgia races. Loeffler and Perdue both backed Trump’s demands for Congress to increase $600 Covid relief payments to $2,000, which McConnell blocked.Ossoff leapt on the opportunity to point out Perdue’s “hypocrisy” for opposing last year’s first relief payment of $1,200 and “obstructing” efforts to provide further direct relief for more than eight months.Whichever of the candidates wins a passage to Washington will join a new Congress already home to a politician from the extremities of Georgia politics.Among House newcomers sworn in Sunday was Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has supported the Q-Anon conspiracy theory and was among a group of Republicans who visited Trump at the White House recently, to discuss the effort to undo the election. More

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      'Traitors and patriots': Republican push to keep Trump in power seems doomed

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      All 12 Republican senators who have pledged not to ratify the electoral college results on Wednesday, and thereby refuse to confirm Joe Biden’s resounding victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election, declined to defend their move on television, a CNN host said on Sunday.
      “It all recalls what Ulysses S Grant once wrote in 1861,” Jake Tapper said on State of the Union, before quoting a letter the union general wrote at the outset of a civil war he won before becoming president himself: ‘There are [but] two parties now: traitors and patriots.’
      “How would you describe the parties today?” Tapper asked.
      The attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat seems doomed, a piece of political theatre mounted by party grandees eager to court supporters loyal to the president before, in some cases, mounting their own runs for the White House.
      Nonetheless on Saturday Ted Cruz of Texas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin led 11 senators and senators-elect in calling for “an emergency 10-day audit” of results in states where the president claims electoral fraud, despite failing to provide evidence and repeatedly losing in court.
      The senators followed Josh Hawley of Missouri – like Cruz thought likely to run for president in 2024 – in pledging to object to the electoral college result. A majority of House Republicans are also expected to object, after staging a Saturday call with Trump to plan their own moves.
      Democrats control the House and senior Senate Republicans are opposed to the attempt to disenfranchise millions – many of them African Americans in swing states – seemingly guaranteeing the attempt will fail. Nonetheless, Vice-President Mike Pence, who will preside over the ratification, welcomed the move by Cruz and others.
      A spokesman for Biden, Michael Gwin, said: “This stunt won’t change the fact that President-elect Biden will be sworn in on 20 January, and these baseless claims have already been examined and dismissed by Trump’s own attorney general, dozens of courts, and election officials from both parties.”
      Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee now a senator from Utah, said: “The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our democratic republic.
      “…More Americans participated in this election than ever before, and they made their choice. President Trump’s lawyers made their case before scores of courts; in every instance, they failed.
      “…Adding to this ill-conceived endeavour by some in Congress is the president’s call for his supporters to come to the Capitol on the day when this matter is to be debated and decided. This has the predictable potential to lead to disruption, and worse.”
      Encouraged by Trump, far-right groups including the Proud Boys are expected to gather in Washington on Wednesday. More

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      The Guardian view on Trump's strategy: overturn result, cheat democracy | Editorial

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      This week, Donald Trump will undermine democracy in the US by supporting the claim that Democrat Joe Biden did not fairly win last November’s presidential election. A peaceful handover of power in a democracy requires losing candidates and their followers to admit defeat. But Mr Trump has manufactured a controversy purely to maintain power and to overturn a legitimate election.US courts have repeatedly thrown out Mr Trump’s evidence-free cases. This has not stopped the president’s accomplices in Congress. They, backed by Mr Trump’s vice-president, on Wednesday plan to challenge Mr Biden’s win to force a debate and votes in Congress. Some scholars point to a historical precedent as offering a slim, perhaps vanishing, chance that the nightmare will continue. Mr Trump will not let an opportunity pass to relitigate an election he lost.For the good of America, he must fail. The alternative is ultimately the collapse of political norms and civil strife. A classic demagogue, Mr Trump is signalling to his supporters that they, like him, should refuse to respect the election’s outcome and reject Mr Biden’s presidency. There is a well-grounded fear that protests could erupt, some of them armed. Mr Trump might call out the national guard or send federal agents to deal with demonstrations. This chaos, Mr Trump no doubt hopes, will pave the way for an autocratic takeover.Mr Trump is a sore loser who cannot stand that he was beaten in a fair election. He should move on but sees no reason why he should yield. After all, Mr Trump has not been punished for his transgressions against tradition, decency and the law. Instead, he has been rewarded. He thinks he can get away with almost anything. The Republican party has only itself to blame for incubating Trumpism, a parasitical ideology that threatens to take over the host.Mr Trump has thrown open the door to the argument of power rather than the power of argument in US electoral politics. With the help of social media, the president has polarised the electorate, building a “counter Republic” online, in which anger and fear are motivating emotions. In this world, the US apparently is being engulfed by socialism and liberal values. Mr Trump sells his chimerical fight as a necessary one, even if it cheats democracy itself. This has allowed him to frame the undoing of a presidential election as just an extension of other anti-democratic Republican tactics – such as gerrymandering and voter suppression – to constrain political opponents.Politicians in the US need to give up on the fantasy of a Trump second term. Questioning the integrity of the presidential election without proof of wrongdoing threatens the idea of liberal democracy. It leaves the US distracted by canards when its real problems are painfully obvious. No one outside of Trump’s orbit thinks that Washington DC ought to play host to rival inaugurations on 20 January. Mr Trump is not embracing chaos to express dissent. He is seeking to bring down the system that defeated him. More

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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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      What to expect when Congress meets to certify Biden's victory

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      US Congress meets on 6 January to certify Joe Biden’s election victory – here’s what to expect.
      A joint session of the US Congress meets at 1pm on Wednesday formally to count the votes cast by the electoral college – 306 for Biden, 232 for Donald Trump – in the last step of the process for certification of the new president.
      Under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate meet in the Capitol. Mike Pence will preside in his role as president of the senate.
      The vice-president opens certificates of the electoral votes delivered from each state – whose electors met to cast their ballots on 14 December – and hand them to party “tellers” to read aloud. As they read each state’s certification, Pence will ask if there are official objections.
      Any such objections are then read out, resulting in a suspension of the session and members of the two legislative houses considering them separately.
      Discussion on each objection is limited to two hours. Both houses then vote on the objection, with a simple majority required to toss out that state’s votes. After all votes are counted, the vice-president declares the winner of the election. More

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      Trump returns to Washington early as allies plot challenge to Biden victory

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      Donald Trump returned to Washington on Thursday, abruptly cutting short a holiday retreat to his private south Florida resort as the president’s allies on Capitol Hill prepare to mount a last-ditch challenge to Joe Biden’s election victory.The president had reportedly been in a stormy mood since his arrival at Mar-a-Lago, where he decamped days before Christmas and was originally expected to remain through the New Year’s Eve celebrations.It was not clear what triggered the president’s change of plans. He declined to answer questions upon boarding for his flight back to the White House on Thursday morning.But hours before the White House announced that Trump would spend New Year’s Eve in Washington, the Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri announced that he would object to the electoral college result when Congress meets on 6 January to affirm Biden as the winner of November’s presidential election.Trump had been goading his most loyal backers in Congress to stage a final intervention on the floor of the House to try to overturn the results of the election.The effort to keep Trump in power is all but destined to fail, but it will test Republicans’ loyalty to the president, who maintains a vice-like grip on their party, even after Americans voted to remove him from office after a single term.Many Senate Republicans had hoped to avoid such a showdown over the certification process, typically a formality. The move by Hawley, a conservative freshman believed to have presidential ambitions, will force his colleagues to publicly affirm or oppose the election results.Trump lost several battleground states by clear margins. His volley of lawsuits alleging widespread voter fraud in six states he lost have been almost uniformly dismissed, including by the supreme court.Officials at local and national level declared it the most secure election in American history, and the electoral college voted earlier this month to certify Biden’s 306-232 win.And yet Trump has refused to concede, spending his last holiday season as president fuming over his loss.On Twitter, the president continued to amplify conspiracy theories about voter fraud and lashed out at Republican officials who have refused his demands to overturn his loss in their states.On Wednesday, he called on the Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, to resign even though multiple recounts affirmed Biden’s narrow, historic victory in the state.Trump’s premature departure from Mar-a-Lago came amid growing concern in Washington that Iran may be planning further military retaliation ahead of the first anniversary of the US killing of the top Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani on 3 January.His return also comes a day after the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, effectively denied Trump’s demand that Congress increase the size of coronavirus relief checks to Americans from $600 to $2,000.Trump for days delayed signing the massive stimulus package – threatening a government shutdown – over his insistence that the legislation include the $2,000 checks. Trump ultimately relented, but continued to press Republican leaders, calling their inaction “pathetic” and a political “death wish”.On Wednesday, McConnell said there was “no realistic path” for the Senate to pass a House bill that would raise the amount of money disbursed to American families grappling with the public health and economic toll of the virus. The Senate is also preparing to override Trump’s veto of a military defense bill that was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.As the pandemic rages, officials in Colorado and California announced the discovery of a new and possibly more contagious variant of the coronavirus, while the vaccine rollout fell behind its goals amid complaints of chaos and underfunding for states, Trump maintained a relatively low public profile during the holiday break, remaining mostly out of view.He made no public comment about the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville, nor the death of a newly elected Republican congressman, Luke Letlow, from complications related to Covid-19.Instead, Trump has remained fixated on undermining the results of the November election since he arrived at Mar-a-Lago on 23 December, accompanied by the first lady, Melania Trump.Already sour, his mood was darkened further when he saw the renovations to his private quarters at the club, which had been overseen by his wife in an effort to prepare their family for life after the White House, according to CNN.Trump’s earlier than expected departure means the president will not attend the resort’s annual New Year’s Eve party, a lavish, black tie affair he and his family traditionally attend.According to CNN, as many as 500 reservations had already been confirmed for the event.The network reported that the party is expected to go ahead without the guest of honor, despite a sharp rise in coronavirus cases and pleas from public health officials to stay home and limit the size of holiday gatherings. 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