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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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      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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      Judge orders Georgia counties to halt voter purge ahead of Senate runoff

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      Two Georgia counties must reverse their decision to purge thousands from voter rolls in advance of the state’s 5 January runoff elections that will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the US Senate.Georgia federal judge Leslie Abrams Gardner said in an order filed late on Monday that these two counties appeared to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address information to invalidate voter registrations, Reuters reported.“Defendants are enjoined from removing any challenged voters in Ben Hill and Muscogee Counties from the registration lists on the basis of National Change of Address data,” she said in the court order. This judge is the sister of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic activist who lost a race for Georgia governor in 2018.Of the more than 4,000 registrations that officials tried to rescind, the vast majority were in Muscogee County. President-elect Joe Biden won this county during the November election. Another 150 were in Ben Hill county, which Donald Trump won with a sizable margin.Almost 2.1 million people – more than 25% of Georgia’s registered voters – have voted in the Senate runoff election that started on 14 December. This race will decide whether Democrats control both houses of Congress.In turn, the result will also influence the fate of Biden’s policy initiatives as a Republican-controlled Senate – even if held by a slim majority – would probably block his agenda. This also includes Biden’s ability to secure his desired cabinet appointees.Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are facing off against GOP incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively. Recent data from FiveThirtyEight places Warnock and Perdue slightly ahead of their opponents.Warnock and Ossoff victories would mean that the Senate is divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. In situations where votes on legislation are evenly split, the tie-breaking vote would be cast by Kamala Harris, as vice-president.The deeply significant runoff has prompted record-breaking fundraising. Ossoff and Warnock each raised more than $100m in a mere two months–surpassing their conservative opponents. Ossoff, who runs a media production business, raised more than $106m from 15 October to 16 December, per his campaign’s most recent financial report. Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, took in slightly more than $103m.Leaders of both parties have made campaign stops. Biden – the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992 – and Harris have campaigned in the state. Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, have also campaigned.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Democrats in Georgia’s runoff elections raise more than $200m in two months

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      Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both running for crucial US Senate seats in Georgia that will decide the fate of Joe Biden’s new administration, have raised over $100m each in just two months.The announcement of the recent record-breaking hauls – which considerably exceed that of their Republican opponents – comes with less than two weeks to go until the runoff races are decided in special elections on 5 January.Ossoff, who runs a media production company and is running against the incumbent Republican senator David Perdue, raised over $106m from 15 October to 16 December, according to his campaign’s latest finance report.Meanwhile, Warnock, who is pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and is running against incumbent Kelly Loeffler, raised just over $103m.The Georgia races are the focus of intense national political interest as they will decide which party controls the Senate – currently held by the Republicans – and in turn the legislative power of President-elect Biden.If the Republicans win one race, they will narrowly maintain power and be a huge break on a wide range of Biden’s actions, including being able to appoint who he wants to his cabinet.But if the Democrats win both races, the Senate will be split 50-50, meaning Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris would decide tie-breaking votes, enabling the Democrats to deliver a more ambitious agenda.The two seats went to runoffs after Perdue and Loeffler, one of the Senate’s wealthiest members, got less than 50% of the vote on election day in November.The previous fundraising record was held by Democrat Jamie Harrison who raised $57m in a quarter in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Senator Lindsey Graham in South Carolina in November.Warnock’s campaign manager Jerid Kurtz said: “We’re humbled by the grassroots support and generosity that continues to power Reverend Warnock’s campaign to represent all Georgians in the US Senate.”Early voting in the state began on 14 December. As of Thursday, over 2m people – over a quarter of the state’s registered voters – had already cast ballots in the election, suggesting that overall turnout will be high.In November, when President-elect Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since 1992, about 4m Georgians voted early.FiveThirtyEight currently has Perdue and Warnock very narrowly ahead.For the Democrats, both President-elect Biden and Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris have campaigned in the state. While for the Republicans, President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka have both made campaign stops.The Democrats have tried to highlight the stock trades of their Republican opponents and their support of Trump, while the Republicans have focused on Warnock, repeatedly referring to him as a “radical liberal”.A group of Black pastors wrote an open letter to Loeffler in which they said her rhetoric against Warnock was “a broader attack against the Black church and faith traditions for which we stand”.Meanwhile, Trump has attacked Republicans in the state, calling Governor Brian Kemp a “clown” and a “fool” and branding Kemp and other prominent Georgia Republicans “Republicans in name only”.Campaigning in Columbus, Georgia on Monday, Harris told supporters at a drive-in rally, “2020 ain’t over til January 5”. She added: “That’s when 2020 will be over. That’s when we’ll get this thing done.”Michelle Obama is due to campaign virtually in the state in a drive-in concert put on by her organisation When We All Vote to mobilise voters. Celebrate Georgia! on 3 January will also feature performances by Rick Ross, Jack Harlow, Pastor Troy and Monica. More

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      Trump claims to be 'working tirelessly' but leaves Covid relief in disarray

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      Donald Trump went to his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday, after claiming to be “working tirelessly for the American people” with a schedule that included “many meetings and calls”. Back in Washington, a Democratic proposal to increase direct payments to Americans under the Covid relief bill, from $600 to $2,000, was blocked.The increase was Trump’s own demand in a surprise video address on Tuesday night but it was shot down by Republicans who opposed greater spending throughout stimulus talks.Should the relief bill fail, millions of Americans will be without desperately needed relief at least until President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats would try again on Monday. “To vote against this bill is to deny the financial hardship that families face,” she said, “and to deny them the relief they need.”The White House did not immediately confirm if Trump was playing golf. Either way, official guidance to reporters about his “tireless” schedule contrasted with recent examples notably light on commitments, which have left Trump free to make baseless claims of electoral fraud and meet with conspiracy theorists and cronies about attempts to subvert the constitution and stay in power.From Florida, on Wednesday night, the president issued the latest batch of pardons and acts of clemency for political allies.Before Trump intervened, the Covid relief bill was agreed at $900bn and tied to huge spending legislation to keep the government open until September next year. The relief package was set to be the second-biggest in US history, after the $2.3tn Cares Act at the beginning of the pandemic.“Just when you think you have seen it all,” Pelosi wrote to colleagues about Trump’s gambit. “The entire country knows that it is urgent for the president to sign this bill, both to provide the coronavirus relief and to keep government open.”Pelosi offered the president’s proposal for increased payments on Thursday under a procedure that allowed just one lawmaker to object and in a so-called pro forma session, with few lawmakers in attendance. It duly failed.Trump has not expressly threatened to veto the Covid package but on Wednesday he did veto the annual National Defense Authorization Act, worth $740bn, over objections to renaming military bases honouring Confederate leaders, to telecoms provisions and more.Congress has not failed to pass the defence bill in 60 years. The House will return on Monday and the Senate on Tuesday, to override Trump’s veto.The president’s extraordinary behaviour has presented his party with a painful political test, not least for Georgia senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, fighting to retain their seats in 5 January runoffs that will decide control of the Senate.Senior Republicans were mostly silent after Trump’s intervention on Covid relief, neither Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell nor Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, speaking publicly. On a conference call, House Republicans complained that Trump had thrown them under the bus, one told the Associated Press. Most had voted for the package and urged leaders to use the TV to explain its benefits, the person said.McCarthy sent a letter to colleagues suggesting Republicans would offer their own proposal, picking up on Trump’s complaints about foreign aid to “re-examine how our tax dollars are spent overseas”. Democrats took advantage of Republican disarray. Jon Ossoff, Perdue’s opponent, tweeted simply: “$2,000 checks now.”The relief package represents a hard-fought compromise, a 5,000-page bill that includes $1.4tn to fund government through September 2021. The relief bill would establish a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefit, along with new subsidies for businesses, schools, healthcare providers and renters facing eviction.Even though treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin represented the White House in talks, Trump railed against provisions in the broader funding package, including foreign aid included each year, and called the bill a “disgrace”. He did not specifically vow to use his veto power, and there may be enough support in Congress to override him if he does. The Senate cleared the relief package by 92-6, the House by 359-53.The bill is expected to be sent for Trump’s signature on Thursday or Friday, a congressional aide told the AP. Trump could also allow it to expire with a “pocket veto” at the end of the year.The consequences of failure would be severe. It would mean no aid to struggling Americans and small businesses, and no additional resources to help with vaccine distribution in a pandemic in which nearly 19 million have been infected and almost 326,000 have died.Furthermore, because lawmakers linked pandemic relief to funding, the government would shut down on 29 December. A resolution could therefore be forced on Monday, when a stopgap funding bill expires. Democrats are reportedly considering another stopgap to keep government running until Biden is sworn in.Biden insisted to newspaper columnists on Wednesday that “there are enough Republicans prepared to meet him in the middle that he can get things done in an evenly divided Congress”. He applauded lawmakers and said the relief package “provides vital relief at a critical time”. He also said more would be needed.Arriving at Mar-a-Lago, Trump was greeted by hundreds of supporters. Few wore masks or socially distanced to mitigate Covid transmission as they waved flags and signs and chanted “Four more years!”One small boy had a sign that said “We’re going to miss you”. But there were a few Trump opponents too. One held a sign that said: “Go Away.” More

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      Environmental groups hail Covid relief bill – but more needs to be done

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      Joe Biden’s pledge to make the climate emergency a top priority of his administration from day one has received a major boost from the $900bn Covid-19 relief bill that cleared Congress this week and now awaits Donald Trump’s signature.
      The president has demanded changes but nonetheless the package has been hailed by environmental groups as an important move towards re-engaging the US with international efforts to tackle the climate crisis and move towards a clean energy future.
      “The bill contains some truly historic provisions that represent the most significant climate legislation passed by Congress in over a decade,” said Sam Ricketts, co-founder of Evergreen Action.
      The Sierra Club, an environmental group which operates in all 50 states, expressed a sigh of relief that Republican intransigence, led by the president and Mitch McConnell in the Senate, had finally been overcome. Kirin Kennedy, the group’s deputy legislative director, expressed confidence that the bill would contribute towards “addressing major sources of pollution, growing clean energy, and making progress across government agencies to advance climate action”.
      But she added that the Biden administration had a lot of work still to do to, in the president-elect’s phrase, “build back better”. Kennedy said that meant “investing in clean, renewable energy that can power communities, not saddling them with false solutions or pollution for decades to come”.
      Set against the time-critical nature of the climate crisis and the need for immediate action to curb pollution and switch to renewable energies, the relief bill falls short both in the scale and ambition of its commitments.
      “Is this enough to meet the urgency of the moment? The short answer is plainly no – the package is smaller than we’ve called for and certainly smaller than the science demands,” Ricketts said.
      But contained in the bill are a number of provisions that represent a clear advance in the US stance on the climate crisis, at the end of four years of Trump administration attacks on environmental protections.
      By the far the most significant of those advances is the commitment to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs, which are widely used as coolants in air conditioners, fridges and cars.
      Under the terms of the relief bill, most HFC use would end by 2035. The overall global impact of such a firm gesture by the US could lead to 0.5C of avoided warming this century.
      Ricketts said that the move was not only important in its own right in the climate fight, but it also made a statement that the US was prepared to work with world partners. That was all the more poignant coming just a month after Trump took the US formally out of the Paris climate agreement.
      “This is a timely way of showing that we can still play on the international stage and meet our commitments,” he said.
      Among other measures in the bill that have received praise from environmental groups are extensions to tax credits for renewable energy technologies. Offshore wind could enjoy a particular boost with the incentives lasting five years.
      “This is an industry that is just starting to drive down the runway for take-off in the US,” Ricketts said. “There’s an enormous potential, especially in the north east, and the five-year tax incentive is critical.”
      A further area of significant reform is the pot of $35bn provided for research and development in a range of innovations designed to confront the climate crisis. They include the creation of more efficient batteries, carbon capture, and advanced nuclear reactor technology.
      Katherine Egland, environment and climate justice chair for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People national board of directors, said that for African American and other low-income communities the relief bill would impact lives. She lives in Gulfport, Mississippi, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and this year has experienced firsthand the confluence of the coronavirus pandemic, the climate crisis and racial injustice.
      “We have been confronted by a syndemic in 2020,” she told the Guardian. “We have had to cope with the disproportionate impacts of Covid and climate, during an unprecedented storm season and a year rife with racial unrest.”
      Egland said congressional action was welcome “after four years of climate denial. It is a positive step in the right direction”.
      But she said that the country would need to do much more to meet the scale of the crisis: “There is no vaccine to inoculate us against climate change.” More

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      Trump loyalists aim to block Biden's goal to rejoin Iran and Paris agreements

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      Two prominent Trump loyalists in the US Senate, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, are reportedly pressing the president to submit the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement to the chamber for ratification, in a last-minute attempt to scupper Democratic plans to take America back into the accords.In a letter obtained by RealClearPolitics, Cruz, from Texas, urges both Trump and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, to plant the seeds of an eventual showdown over the two critical international agreements in the early days of the Biden administration.As Cruz describes it, by submitting the pacts to the Senate, Trump could pave the way for a vote that would fail to achieve the two-thirds needed to ratify them – thus blocking Joe Biden’s efforts to bring the US back in line with international allies.Cruz sets out the cynical ploy in his letter. He begins by praising Trump’s decision to pull America out of both the 2015 Iran deal, which restricted its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, and the 2016 Paris accords on reducing global emissions of pollution responsible for the climate crisis.“I urge you now to remedy the harm done to the balance of powers by submitting the Iran deal and the Paris agreement to the Senate as treaties,” Cruz writes. “Only by so doing with the Senate be able to satisfy its constitutional role to provide advice and consent in the event any future administration attempts to revive these dangerous deals.”Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris agreement “on day one of my presidency”. He has similarly indicated he would revive the Iran nuclear deal as a top foreign policy objective – in both cases using his executive powers rather than relying on Congress.Cruz hopes that his tactic would cut across Biden’s intentions by declaring the accords foreign treaties which require two-thirds ratification in the Senate. Failure to achieve that margin – an impossible target in a narrowly divided chamber – would undercut any unilateral Biden move.Graham has been ploughing a similar furrow. In a stream of tweets last week the senator from South Carolina said he had been working hard “to secure a vote in the US Senate regarding any potential decision to reenter the Iran nuclear deal”.He added: “The Senate should go on the record about whether it would support or oppose this decision. Also believe Senate should be on record in support or opposition to any decision to reenter Paris climate accord.” More