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      'I’ll be for you': Jon Ossoff thanks Georgia as election draws to close – video

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      The Democratic candidate has given a speech thanking the people of Georgia for electing him to the US Senate before the final tally is formally announced.
      In his speech, Jon Ossoff asked the country to unite to beat the coronavirus pandemic and said he would fight both for people who voted for him and those who did not in the second of two runoff elections in Georgia
      US Georgia senate election: latest updates More

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      'I will fight for you': Democrat Raphael Warnock declares victory in Georgia Senate runoff – video

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      Shortly after midnight, Rev Raphael Warnock delivered a message of hope to Georgians and declared his win in the Senate runoff election: ‘Whether you voted for me or not – know this: I see you. I hear you. And I will fight for you.’ He beat Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler, a Trump loyalist. This is the first time for 24 years that a Democrat will represent Georgia in the Senate
      Georgia Senate runoffs: Democrat Raphael Warnock wins against Kelly Loeffler
      Georgia runoffs: Democrat Raphael Warnock wins in Senate battle – live 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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      Georgia Senate runoff elections – live results

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      Voters in the state of Georgia are back to the polls today to cast their ballots in two runoff elections that will determine control of the US Senate. This will significantly affect the extent to which President-elect Joe Biden will be able implement his agenda.

      Why these elections matter
      In the November general election the Democrats maintained their hold on the House of Representatives, but fell short of the 51 seats needed to retake the Senate, where the Republicans have had a majority for the past six years.
      Tom McCarthy said: “Control of the US Senate is on the line. If the Democrats win both races, the president-elect will gain a big opportunity to build a progressive legacy. If Democrats lose one or both races, the country will enter at least a two-year period of divided government, with the Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, retaining power and likely frustrating Biden’s agenda.
      “If Democrats win both races, the Senate would be split 50/50, but Democrats would effectively control the body with Kamala Harris, the vice-president-elect, in her role as president of the Senate, breaking any ties in a strict party-line vote.
      “The runoff races are being held in accordance with state election laws because no candidate in either race won 50% of the vote in the November elections.”
      Who are the candidates?
      Tom McCarthy said: “The Republican candidates include one sitting senator – the wealthy appointee Kelly Loeffler, 50 – and one senator whose term has just ended, David Perdue, 71.
      “Challenging the Republicans are fresh faces on the Democratic side. Documentary film-maker Jon Ossoff, 33, a former congressional staffer and failed House candidate, is running to replace Perdue, while Atlanta pastor and first-time candidate Rev Raphael Warnock, 51, is running to unseat Loeffler.” 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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      During this miserable lame-duck period, we must trust in a better future | Art Cullen

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      We are stuck in this interregnum, between a maladroit trying to burn down the Republic and a Normal Joe, wondering what sort of rabbit someone might pull out of a hat, waiting on a vaccine, trusting it will pass.Control of the US Senate hangs in the balance, as Georgia voters head to the polls this Tuesday. It took 10 days to get presidential results out of the Peach State. Now we are again awaiting word, this time of whether Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnell will control the 2021 calendar. In the meantime, the economy teeters alongside our constitutional order.On Wednesday, Congress is set to consider certifying election results. A dirty dozen of Republican senators – plus 140 members of the House of Representatives – have said they will contest the results from certain swing states, despite Mitch McConnell’s urgings not to do so. They called this sedition in Abe Lincoln’s day.You could ignore it all by immersing your head in football games you don’t care about any more. Some drink – these are the holidays, after all, and there is nothing else to do, hasn’t really been anything to do since March, so why not?All the experts say we should remain calm and stay safe. But Normal Joe doesn’t raise his right hand and pledge on the Bible until January 20. A lot of weirdness gets sucked into the vacuum in the interim. On Saturday, Trump threatened to criminally charge the Georgia secretary of state, a Republican, for not cooking up the 11,780 ballots that the loser needs to win. Even Rudy Giuliani couldn’t dream up this kind of scheme.The good folks at the nursing homes are in the dark about when they might get vaccine doses. We old folks at home are in the dark with them. We have no idea how to find out when or where we will get the jab. The state is working on it, we are told. So we sit here and drink anxiety with our morning toast.During more ordinary times, these quadrennial weeks leading up to the inauguration are supposed to be a celebration of the world’s longest-running experiment in democracy. Instead, the president has called assorted wingnuts to Washington to protest what they believe is the Big Steal. “It’s going to be wild!” the tweeter in chief tweeted. Wild is not what democracy needs right now.Then there’s Congress’s so-called Covid relief. The out-of-work bartender currently forced to choose between paying rent and paying for medical prescriptions probably needs a lot more than $600. Maybe Biden can wrangle some more, depending on how that Georgia vote count goes, followed by recounts and court filings. Maybe the bar owner can get a second swing at a payroll protection grant, but maybe not. It all seems out of our hands.The Iowa legislature says its priorities are tax cuts, not supplementing unemployment benefits. You don’t know what will happen in one-party government. How far will Republicans go? There appear to be no limits when our congressman is calling to repudiate our electoral process.Everything should clear up by 20 January if it all doesn’t blow up in the next week or two. The vaccines will show up sooner or later. Local budgets and property tax rates will get nailed down, not without pain. The Fox propaganda machine is cracking under pressure from the rest of the rightwing looneysphere. The Republican party is morphing by the day. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska says Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri is playing with fire, one young Republican Ivy League midwesterner to another.Are these the death rattles of a discredited movement of narcissism and fear, or the birth of something worse that endures? The November election suggests the former but we are going to play hell getting there.Until the Bidens are sleeping in the White House and not in a Delaware bunker, we sit in this helpless tumult of between. It’s about to turn. I believe this will pass. Let’s pray that hope will prevail.Art Cullen is editor of the Storm Lake Times in north-west Iowa, where he won the Pulitzer prize for editorial writing. He is a Guardian US columnist and author of the book Storm Lake: Change, Resilience, and Hope in America’s Heartland More

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      Biden and Trump head to Georgia for dueling rallies ahead of Senate runoffs

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      Donald Trump and Joe Biden will stage dueling rallies in Georgia on the eve of two runoffs that will determine control of the Senate as the president continues his increasingly brazen effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
      Three million Georgia voters cast ballots during the early voting period, which ended Thursday – a record for runoff elections in the state. Tens of millions of dollars have poured into the state, as residents spent the last several weeks bombarded by political ads and outreach encouraging them to vote in Tuesday’s elections.
      If Democrats win both seats – no easy feat – the Senate would be evenly divided, with Kamala Harris, the vice-president-elect, serving as the tie-breaking vote. If Republicans win at least one of the races, Mitch McConnell will remain the Senate majority leader, making it far more difficult for the president-elect to deliver on top policy priorities such as healthcare, taxation and climate.
      Biden and Trump’s visits to the state on Monday highlight the urgency – and the stakes – of the twin races that will shape the political landscape for the first years of the incoming administration.
      Biden was the first Democratic presidential nominee in nearly three decades to win Georgia, where changing demographics and a political realignment across the Atlanta suburbs have turned this once reliably Republican southern state into a presidential battleground. Multiple recounts affirmed Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia, but that hasn’t stopped Trump from continuing to amplify false claims about the state’s election process and its results.
      In an hour-long phone call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Saturday, Trump implored him to “find 11,780 votes” – just enough to reverse his defeat in the state’s presidential election.
      The conversation, a recording of which was first published by the Washington Post, may further damage Republicans, who were already nervous that Trump’s fixation on his electoral loss – based on meritless claims and debunked conspiracy theories about voter fraud – could depress turnout among his supporters.
      The races have drawn firepower from some of the biggest names in American politics. In addition to Trump and Biden, Barack Obama narrated an ad for Jon Ossoff while Michelle Obama recorded a message for the Rev Raphael Warnock, the two Democratic contenders.
      Mike Pence was in Milner, Georgia on Monday to campaign on behalf of the Republican candidates, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. The vice-president exhorted voters at Rock Springs church to turn up at the polls on Tuesday to protect the conservative victories Trump had achieved over the last four years.
      “We need Georgia to defend the majority,” he told said. “In one more day, we need people of faith to stand with two leaders who will support life and liberty and the freedom of every American. In one more day, we need to win Georgia and save America.”
      Pence’s visit came a day after Harris held a drive-in rally with the Democratic candidates Ossoff and Warnock in Savannah. In her remarks, Harris assailed Trump for his call with Georgia’s secretary of state, calling it a “bald-faced, bold abuse of power” and “most certainly the voice of desperation”.
      Loeffler is expected to appear with Trump at his Monday night rally in Dalton, a heavily Republican area in north Georgia that has seen relatively low turnout during the early voting period. Perdue, who is in quarantine after being exposed to a staff member with the coronavirus, told Fox News that he would attend Monday’s rally virtually.
      Since the November election, Trump has continued his sustained assault on Georgia’s Republican leaders, who he has accused without evidence of ignoring instances of voter fraud. He has relentlessly attacked Raffensperger, a Republican, who has resisted enormous pressure from the president and Republican leaders to subvert the election results. And last month, Trump called Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, a “fool” and said he should resign.
      Trump’s attacks have further cleaved the party at the very moment they would benefit from unity. During a rally in Georgia last month, Trump devoted considerably more time to airing his own political grievances with the state’s Republican leaders than promoting the Republican candidates he was there to campaign for.
      During his last visit to the state, Biden warned that Perdue and Loeffler would be “roadblocks” in the Senate, focused more on obstructing a Democratic administration than working to deliver for Georgia. A vote for Ossoff and Warnock, Biden said, was a “vote for two United States senators who know how to say the word ‘yes’ and not just ‘no’”.
      Perdue, who has served one term in the Senate, and Loeffler, who was appointed to the seat in December 2019, have largely embraced that characterization, warning voters that they are the last line of defense against a “radical liberal agenda”.
      In an appearance on Fox News on Monday, Perdue said he was doubtful the conversation between Trump and Raffensperger would have any impact on the election and appeared more dismayed that participants on the call would leak the recording, a decision he called “disgusting”.
      Perdue earlier said he supported an effort led by a group of Republican senators to indulge Trump’s desperate attempts to remain in power by objecting to the results of the elections in several states when Congress votes this week. “I’m encouraging my colleagues to object,” Perdue said during an appearance on Fox News on Sunday. “This is something the American people demand right now.”
      Perdue’s term expired on Sunday and therefore will not vote on Wednesday, when Congress meets to certify the results of the Electoral College.
      Loeffler, who has made loyalty to Trump a central theme of her campaign, declined to answer the question directly. In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Loeffler said she was “seriously looking” at the plot, backed by nearly a quarter of Senate Republicans, but did not commit to supporting it.
      “Everything is on the table,” she said. More