Congress Affirms Biden’s Victory
Hours after a mob of Trump supporters stormed and occupied the Capitol, forcing Congress to halt its counting of Electoral College votes and evacuate the building, members of Congress came back, kept counting and early Thursday morning ratified Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Congress affirmed that Biden won the Electoral College, 306 to Trump’s 232.
Four people died during the insurrection at the Capitol — a Capitol police officer shot one woman during a standoff in the building and three others suffered “medical emergencies” during the violent scenes, according to the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department chief.
It also dampened some Republican members’ enthusiasm for challenging the count of Biden’s win.
Some.
The objection to Arizona’s electors — which started before lawmakers had to evacuate — was dismissed by a vote of 93-6 in the Senate and 303-121 in the House. That represented a substantial step back from Senate Republicans — before Wednesday, at least a dozen were planning to support the certification objections.
But House Republicans largely stayed the course in challenging the results, raising objections to the tallies from Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania after Congress reconvened. A Republican senator would sign on only to the Pennsylvania objection, which was later rejected 92-7 by the Senate without a debate. The House debate on Pennsylvania lasted the full two hours and got heated, but eventually they rejected the objection too, 282 to 138.
In the end, at nearly 4 a.m. on Thursday, Congress affirmed Biden and Harris as the next president and vice president of the United States. And Trump released a statement committing to “an orderly transition on January 20th” (while repeating false claims about the election).
When we started this live blog, we were focused on Georgia. In case you forgot, Democrats won two Senate seats in Georgia on Tuesday, thus winning control of the next Senate. The 24 hours that followed will long be remembered in U.S. history — as an insurrection, a tragedy, an attempted coup, and, most definitely, as the natural culmination of the Trump presidency.