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      Congress is facing an election reckoning. Democracy hangs in the balance | Lloyd Green

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      Democracy in the US teeters on the edge of a figurative sword. On Wednesday, the US Congress will convene to formally receive the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Unfortunately, Donald Trump and his allies have converted a legal formality into a blatant coup attempt.
      The ex-reality television host is like none who have come before him. Presidents Hoover, Carter and Bush Sr all suffered rejection at the ballot box after just one term. However painful, they accepted the electorate’s verdict. In the end, personal pride took a backseat to the orderly transition of power. The nation had spoken.
      Likewise, in 2000, Al Gore ultimately acquiesced to a split US supreme court decision, which the late Justice Antonin Scalia later confessed was “as we say in Brooklyn, a piece of shit”, and conceded to George W Bush. Adding insult to injury, Gore, who was then vice-president, presided over the joint session of Congress where the results were announced and certified. Fealty to the American experiment came first.
      Not any more. The US confronts a president determined to hold on to power past the constitutionally mandated expiration of his term, and congressional Republicans hellbent on aiding and abetting this desperate bid to overturn the election’s outcome.
      Last Thursday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, told his caucus that the upcoming votes were the “most consequential” of his career. It was not hyperbole. More than two centuries of supremacy of consent of the governed and We the People are riding on it.
      Beyond that, McConnell could be a witnessing a civil war among his own ranks. What was supposed to be his own post-election victory lap has evaporated in the face of a president who demands the self-sacrifice of others like a modern-day Moloch. Nancy Pelosi is not the only person on Capitol Hill with a headache. More

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      Republicans face test of loyalty to Trump as Congress meets to certify election

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      After four years of defending and emboldening Donald Trump, Republicans in Congress on Wednesday will face their most consequential test of loyalty yet: to indulge the president’s brazen and meritless bid to overturn the results an election he lost, or to uphold the democratic process and certify Joe Biden as the next president of the United States.A handful of congressional Republicans are preparing to object to the certification of the electoral college results when Congress meets on Wednesday, turning what is traditionally a perfunctory affair into Trump’s last stand. Their coordinated rebellion, unprecedented in modern times, is all but destined to fail and Biden will be inaugurated on 20 January.In his increasingly desperate bid to cling to power, Trump, who has not conceded, has spent the last several weeks attempting to enlist allies and pressure public officials to overturn Biden’s 306-232 election win. His machinations escalated this weekend when he pressured the Georgia secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensberger, to “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s win in the state.As required by the constitution, the joint session of Congress will meet to count the electoral votes. The votes will be delivered to the chamber in mahogany boxes and read aloud in alphabetical order of the states, with Mike Pence over the meeting. At the conclusion of the count, it is the vice-president who finally, formally declares the winner.Around the Capitol, authorities are bracing for “stop the steal” protests they fear could turn violent. Trump, who has encouraged his followers to join the gathering even as coronavirus cases surge across the country, said he plans to attend, as do several of his allies and a number of far-right groups, including the Proud Boys.Trump has been pressuring Pence to simply reject the vote count. On Tuesday, Trump claimed that “the vice-president has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors”. This is false.A handful of Trump loyalists in the House have been planning this showdown for weeks. But in recent days the effort gained support from a quarter of Senate Republicans, first from Josh Hawley, an ambitious first-term Republican from Missouri. Days later, a coalition of Republican senators and senators-elect led by the Texas senator Ted Cruz announced their opposition to certifying Biden’s win unless Congress agrees to a 10-day audit of the election results, which is highly unlikely.On Monday, the Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler, vying to keep her seat, announced that she too would object. (David Perdue, the other Republican candidate in Georgia, supports the effort but will not vote because his term expired on Sunday.)In the House, where the effort is led by the Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, a top Trump ally, Republicans said the plan to voice objections to Biden’s wins in six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.To succeed, an objection must come from both a member of the House and the Senate. Hawley has said he planned to object to the results from Pennsylvania, while Cruz plans to object to the results in Arizona. Both are considered presidential contenders in 2024, seeking to ingratiate themselves with Trump’s fervent base.The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, sought to avoid this internecine showdown, keenly aware of the political blowback members of his caucus will face – either for defying the president or attempting to subvert the will of millions of voters. Several Senate Republicans have condemned the effort – more than enough needed to ensure the campaign will fail. The Republican senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska has called it a “dangerous ploy”. And Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, one of the states that is expected to draw an objection, denounced what he said was his colleagues “effort to disenfranchise millions of voters in my state and others”.All 50 states have certified the election results after a number of closely contested states conducted post-election audits and recounts to ensure their accuracy. Courts at every level, including the supreme court, have rejected dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies to challenge the results.None of the senators who plan to reject the results of the election have come forward with specific allegations of fraud. Instead they have pointed to public opinion polls that show, after weeks of the president and his allies insisting the election was stolen from him, their supporters believe the election was “rigged” as evidence that further investigation was needed. More

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      Who are the key players in the US presidential election certification?

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      Congress is set to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election on Wednesday, but the process is expected to be interrupted by unfounded objections by Republicans trying to curry favor with Donald Trump and the base of voters that support him.Other Republicans have said they will not join efforts to overturn the election result after dozens of state and federal lawsuits, state legislative hearings and elections challenges at the local level have failed to produce a shred of evidence to support Trump’s wild and false claims of voter fraud.From 1pm ET, Congress will begin certifying the presidential election result, state by state. But any state result is subject to objection by any member of Congress – and if both a senator and a member of the House of Representatives sign on to any one objection, the two chambers must retire for up to two hours to debate the objection.Here is a short list of the key players to watch:Senators Josh Hawley and Ted CruzHawley, from Missouri, and Cruz, from Texas, are leading a group of Republican senators who have said they will join objections to state results.Each politician hopes to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024, and their willingness to sign on to Trump’s baseless campaign is recognized as being a sign of their political ambitions.Challenges in the House of Representatives to a state’s presidential election result are not uncommon. The House is four times as large as the Senate and, with every member coming up for election every two years, the chamber is subject to constant turnover and the attending ideological turbulence.But the Senate has mostly sat out from past wild assaults on the valid results of presidential elections. Until now.Senators Tom Cotton and Mike LeeThe softness of support among even very conservative-slash-ambitious senators for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election signals the basic weakness of the effort and the series of question marks that lay ahead for the Republican party.Cotton, a blistering conservative from Arkansas, is also expected to run for president in 2024, while Lee is a conservative ally of Trump and a close ally of Cruz. But each senator has announced that he will not support objections to the state electoral tallies. There’s no telling what voters in a presidential primary three years hence will remember of the current episode, but Cotton for one has declined to join the Trump dead-enders.Mitch McConnellThe Republican Senate majority leader asked his caucus not to join challenges to the election result, and he dispatched his top lieutenant on national TV to announce that any such challenge “would go down like a shot dog”.And yet, about a quarter of McConnell’s caucus and a majority of newly elected Republican senators has signed on to Trump’s mission, in direct defiance of the party leader.How will McConnell handle challenges that he does not support from his own party to election results? Some progressives have indulged fantasies of a catastrophic Republican rift playing out on cable TV.In reality, most of America will not be watching and whatever rifts open are most likely to feed an internal party struggle such as it may develop.Nancy PelosiThe Democrat House speaker will be in charge of responding to objections raised in her chamber to state election results. Widely praised for her expedient and effective handling of the 2019 impeachment inquiry, Pelosi is thought to be organizing a united Democratic front with room for Republican recruits. In any case the battle is playing out on her turf of parliamentary procedure and coalition-building expertise.The House RepublicansA number of House Republicans, led by some of the hottest firebrands on Capitol Hill such as Alabama’s Mo Brooks and Texas’ Louie Gohmert, have vowed to object to a number of state election results. Unlike their counterparts in the Senate, some of these House members would appear to be acting not out of a cynical political calculus but as true believers in the Trump cause. Many are return figures from the defense of Trump during his impeachment in the fall of 2019.Mike PenceAs vice-president, Pence is the ceremonial president of the Senate, meaning he will serve as presiding officer for the announcement of Joe Biden’s election victory.As vice president at the start of 2017, Biden filled a similar role for the announcement of Trump’s victory. But unlike Biden, Pence is serving under a president who wishes to overturn the election result, introducing complications for Pence, who would like to stay on Trump’s good side as another potential 2024 presidential candidate.Speculative scenarios for an act of indecision or contravention by Pence abound – and seem largely overblown. Senator Chuck Grassley had suggested that Pence might absent himself from the proceedings, but it appears Pence will preside. Most analysts expect him to certify the presidential election result in accordance with the minor and ceremonial capacity allotted to him by the constitution. More

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      What's expected to happen when Congress meets to certify the 2020 election result?

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      A joint session of Congress is scheduled to begin meeting on Wednesday at 1pm to finally certify Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.Never in the modern political history of the United States have these proceedings been notable. For 150 years, Congress has acted in accordance with the constitution and the 1887 Electoral Count Act to simply receive election results from the states and announce them to the nation. It usually takes a couple hours on a weekday, and does not make many headlines.This year will be different. Goaded by Donald Trump, a dozen Republican senators have announced they will join with conspiracy-minded members of the House of Representatives to advance unfounded challenges to the states’ election results. These challenges will proceed in spite of an utter lack of evidence of any significant voting irregularities, dozens of foregoing contrary court decisions and an unbroken chain of miserably weak and corrupt challenges at state and local levels.The process of congressional certification of the presidential election result this year will be different for two main reasons. One, Trump has demanded that his election loss at the hands of more than 81m Americans be overturned. And two, key Republicans players in Congress have decided to support Trump’s effort to advance their own political ambitions.The events of the day leave plenty of room for unexpected twists. But here is a short guide to how the proceedings are expected to unfold.Delivery of electoral votesEvery state certified its election results before a 14 December deadline. The states submitted results to the national archivist. On Wednesday, copies of the certifications will be delivered to Congress in ceremonial boxes, in a scene recalling the ceremonial delivery one year ago of the articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate.Roll call of statesThe presiding officer for the proceedings is the vice-president, Mike Pence, in his role as president of the senate. If the vice-president is unavailable, the longest-serving senator would fill in. The presiding officer announces each state in alphabetical order. Each state’s result is announced in turn. The tally for each presidential candidate accrues as the votes are announced. Biden won the election 306-232. That is expected to be the basic final tally. But stray single votes for non-candidates, in symbolic protest of the election, often appear.ObjectionsHere is where the process is likely to give way to unusual detours. Republicans have announced they will object to certain states’ results. Any objection to a state’s result must be submitted in writing. If at least one member of both the Senate and the House of Representatives signs any objection, the joint session is suspended and the houses retire to their respective chambers for up to two hours’ debate on the objection.Serial debateIt’s not clear how many state results may become subject to Republican objections. No substantive claims of voter fraud have surfaced in any state. But Republicans are acutely aware of which state results sealed Trump’s loss, and as many as six of those states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) could become the focus for objections. What is clear is that after each objection, a new debate must commence, meaning the overall process of certification could be prolonged.Dismissing objectionsAt the end of debate over an objection to a state result, each chamber of Congress votes on the objection. If both chambers vote in favor of an objection, it is sustained and the slate of electors in question is tossed. However, if either chamber votes against any objection, the objection is tossed.The House of Representatives is extremely likely to dismiss any objection to the results in any state because the chamber is controlled by Democrats, who have not trafficked in election fraud conspiracies and lies, and who would prefer to see the rightful winner of the election, Joe Biden, installed as president.But the Senate is also unlikely to toss any state’s election result, because there (appear to) remain a sufficient number of Republican members of that body unwilling to sell out democracy to Trump to vote down any objection from the ambitious few.Thus, no state result is likely to be tossed.Mike Pence’s roleAt the end of the proceedings, it is prescribed that the president of the senate, the vice-president of the United States, in this case Pence, announces the state of the vote. Joe Biden filled this role in 2016. It’s a ceremonial role employing ceremonial language.But Trump and others have urged Pence to seek a greater role in the proceedings – to advance certain objections, perhaps, or to resist the certification of the vote.Under the law, it does not matter what Trump thinks Pence’s role ought to be. The role is clearly prescribed in the constitution and in election law.ConclusionThe presiding officer recognizes a so-called “teller” from Congress, who reports a count “as the result of the ascertainment and the counting of the electoral vote for president and vice-president of the United States”.Then the presiding officer says: “The state of the vote for the president of the United States as delivered to the president of the Senate is as follows.” And he announces the tally.More ceremonial language follows:“This announcement of the state of the vote by the president of the Senate shall be deemed sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice-president of the United States…“The purpose of this joint session having been concluded … the chair declares the joint session dissolved.” More

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      US congressman who said 'amen and a-woman' prayer hits back at critics

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      A Democratic congressman said he was surprised by the negative response after he ended an opening prayer on the first day of the new Congress by saying “amen and a-woman” – and said conservative critics including Donald Trump Jr had only proved themselves “soiled by selfishness, perverted by prejudice and inveigled by ideology”.Emanuel Cleaver, a United Methodist minister and former mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, is beginning his ninth term. He told the Kansas City Star his “A-woman” reference on Sunday was intended to recognize the record number of women serving in the new Congress.There are 144 women serving in the House and Senate. The previous high was 129.But Cleaver’s words spurred a torrent of criticism from conservatives who accused him of misunderstanding the meaning of “amen” – a Hebrew word that means “so be it”.One Republican representative, Guy Reschenthaler, of Pennsylvania, incorrectly stated on Twitter that “amen” had Latin origins, but added: “It’s not a gendered word. Unfortunately, facts are irrelevant to progressives. Unbelievable.”Trump Jr made the same mistake, writing: “It isn’t a gendered word but that didn’t stop them from being insane. Is this what you voted for?”Cleaver said he “concluded with a lighthearted pun in recognition of the record number of women who will be representing the American people in Congress during this term as well as in recognition of the first female chaplain of the House of Representatives whose service commenced this week”.Cleaver led the search committee that selected Margaret Grun Kibben, the former chief chaplain of the navy, for that role.“I personally find these historic occasions to be blessings from God for which I am grateful,” Cleaver said, adding that he was “deeply disappointed that my prayer has been misinterpreted and misconstrued by some to fit a narrative that stokes resentment and greater division among portions of our population.“Rather than reflecting on my faithful requests for community healing and reversion from our increasingly tribal tendencies, it appears that some have latched on to the final word of this conversation in an attempt to twist my message to God and demean me personally.“In doing so, they have proven one point of my greater message – that we are all ‘soiled by selfishness, perverted by prejudice and inveigled by ideology’.” More

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      Josh Hawley dodges question during Fox News grilling on election challenge

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      A prominent Republican senator has declined to clearly answer a question about whether he is involved in a bid to reverse the result of the 2020 presidential election that Democrat Joe Biden won convincingly in November.Asked if he was trying to “overturn the election” and keep Donald Trump in power, Missouri senator Josh Hawley told Fox News: “That depends what happens on Wednesday.”That is when Congress will meet to count Joe Biden’s 306-232 electoral college victory, which has been certified by all 50 states. Formal objections due to be raised by Hawley, around a dozen other senators and more than 100 Republicans in the House will not overturn the result – as Trump and his supporters hope they will.Democrats hold the House, guaranteeing defeat there, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and other senior Republicans in that chamber also oppose the objections.Speaking on Monday night, Hawley at first avoided questions about whether he was trying to overturn an election and thereby disenfranchise millions of Americans, insisting he was objecting to the handling of the presidential election in states including Pennsylvania.“I just want to pin you down,” anchor Bret Baier said, eventually, “on on what you’re trying to do. Are you trying to say that as of 20 January [inauguration day] that President Trump will be president?”“Well,” said Hawley, “that depends on what happens on Wednesday. I mean, this is why we have to debate.”Baier answered: “No it doesn’t. The states, by the constitution, they certify the election, they did certify it by the constitution. Congress doesn’t have the right to overturn the certification, at least as most experts read it.”“Well,” Hawley said, “Congress is directed under the 12th amendment to count the electoral votes, there’s a statute that dates back to the 1800s, 19th century, that says there is a right to object, there’s a right to be heard, and there’s also [the] certification right.”Baier countered: “It’s from 1876, senator, and it’s the Tilden-Hayes race, in which there were three states that did not certify their electors. So Congress was left to come up with this system this commission that eventually got to negotiate a grand bargain.”That bargain left a Republican president, Rutherford Hayes, in power in return for an end to Reconstruction after the civil war. In August, the historian Eric Foner told the Guardian: “Part of the deal was the surrender of the rights of African Americans. I’m not sure that’s a precedent we want to reinvigorate, you know?”Baeir continued: “But now all of the states have certified their elections. As of 14 December. So it doesn’t by constitutional ways, open a door to Congress to overturn that, does it?”“My point,” Hawley said, “is this is my only opportunity during this process to raise an objection and to be heard. I don’t have standing to file lawsuits.”Trump’s campaign has filed more than 50 lawsuits challenging electoral results, losing the vast majority and being dismissed by the supreme court.Hawley dodged a subsequent question about whether his own White House ambitions are the real motivation for his objection – as they seem to be for other senators looking to appease the Trumpist base of the party.Also on Monday night, activists from the group ShutDownDC held what they called an “hour-long vigil” at Hawley’s Washington home. Demanding he drop his objection, they said they sang, lit candles and delivered a copy of the US constitution.Hawley, in Missouri at the time, complained that “Antifa scumbags” had “threatened my wife and newborn daughter, who can’t travel. They screamed threats, vandalized, and tried to pound open our door.” More

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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