What Happened This Week In Washington — And Georgia

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.

It is hard to find words to describe the events of today, but after a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol earlier today, breaking up Congress’s efforts to certify the election results, Congress reconvened, at 8 p.m. ET, to once again pick up the debate.

Historically, this vote has been a largely ceremonial one, but in the days leading up to this year’s certification, it became the latest litmus test for politicians’ loyalty to Trump and the newest effort to overturn what the president has repeatedly and baselessly claimed is a rigged election.

Today, we saw the consequences of those actions — violence being incited at the Capitol. The events, though, seem to have some effect on how many GOP senators and representatives have chosen to continue to object to the election results. This was particularly notable in the Senate. Reportedly, 14 GOP senators had planned to object to the results in Arizona, but only six did so in the end. The number of Republican who objected to the results was higher in the House (121).

At this point, both the House and Senate have held their debates over results in Arizona and the objection has failed. It is unclear how many other states’ results will be questioned, as Congress hears objections in alphabetical order. But Hawley has already objected to Pennsylvania’s results, and the House will open the floor to debate.

This could take a while, so we’re shutting down for now as they debate, but the important thing to remember here is that this effort is futile: Congress does not have the votes to overturn the election or any legitimate reason to do so, but this episode remains an unsettling one for our democracy, as it raises the spectre of what might have happened if circumstances were slightly different — which is something Congress and the American public will to have to grapple with in the wake of Trump’s presidency.

Initially, an objection to Georgia’s results was expected, but as Loeffler changed her decision earlier today in light of the violence at the Capitol, there was no objection. We are expecting, however, for Hawley to object to the results in Pennsylvania.

It’s a terrible day and I think it’s fortunate that it didn’t end up being worse, with one or more members of Congress being injured or killed. Beyond that, it’s hard to say much. It certainly did weaken the anti-certification movement in the short run, though far more so in the Senate than the House. And it probably weakens Trumpism in the long run too, to the extent that it will now be even harder to deny the movement’s association with violence — although the Georgia runoff losses may wind up being the bigger blow to how much future Republicans want to emulate Trump’s tactics. Biden’s victory will presumably be certified at some point early in the morning. But the crisis isn’t over, as it isn’t entirely clear who’s really in command of the government or what Trump might try next.

Today’s events were unbelievable, unprecedented and terrible. I think most Americans felt that way, and it looks like many members of Congress did too. The GOP anti-certification push lost energy, and a very small number of senators ended up backing it. And while a majority of House Republicans voted in support of an anti-certification motion, the GOP in both chambers isn’t looking to fight on this as hard as it seemed the party would earlier in the day. Plus, on the Senate floor, you had Mitt Romney really attack Trump and no Republican jumping in to defend him.

A couple hours ago we recorded this podcast conversation about what happened in D.C. today and the results of the Senate runoffs in Georgia.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser has extended the public emergency that was declared earlier today by 15 days. It will now continue through the end of Trump’s presidency, according to NBC News.

121 yeas and 303 nays is the final vote in the House, says Pelosi, meaning that there wasn’t a majority in favor of objecting to the Electoral College vote in Arizona. All the yeas were Republicans, where members were far more likely to object than in the Senate. Now back to the joint session.

I should emphasize that I don’t actually know who is running for president in 2024. But there are figures in the GOP that many observers think are keeping the door open to run and I think it’s worth looking at this vote in that context.

Two of the most prominent figures in Congress who backed Trump’s bid to fight the certification, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, are both expected to explore 2024 presidential bids.

But other Republicans who are likely to flirt with 2024 bids did not join this effort. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska was not unsurprising, because he has been critical of Trump in the past. Sen Mike Lee of Utah breaking with Trump was also not that surprising. Lee has not been as vocal as people like Sasse in terms of taking on the president on these kinds of questions around democratic values. At the same time, he has a fairly low Trump score. (He voted against Trump’s position more than all but six senators in 2019-2020, usually opposing government spending bills he feels are too large and trying to rein in executive power on foreign policy.). Sens Marco Rubio of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina I suspect were trying to figure out where the wind was blowing — and pro-Trump demonstrators effectively invading the Capitol likely moved them to break with Trump on this issue.

Perhaps the most surprising person to break with Trump was Sen. Tom Cotton, who aligned with the outgoing president on basically every major issue over the last four years, most notably on immigration policy.

Even before this certification debate, Lee and Sasse were never going to win the GOP nomination if it turned into a contest over who is the most Trump-like figure and most aligned with the president. But Cotton either seems to be betting this vote won’t matter much to his presidential prospects in terms of courting Trump-aligned GOP voters or just decided he will not take an overtly anti-democratic step to align himself with the president’s base. We’ll find out in a few years if this issue reverberates on the campaign trail.

Rep. Liz Cheney, who is the No. 3 Republican in the party’s leadership in the House, is expected to be the top Republican in that chamber to vote for certification. She is also a potential 2024 candidate. This is also not surprising. Over the last year, Cheney has become a vocal critic of Trump, both in terms of his breaking with democratic values and on foreign policy issues, where Cheney views Trump as insufficiently hawkish.

Down to just a handful of votes to go, with Republicans voting 122-79 in favor of objecting to Arizona’s Electoral College slate so far and Democrats 0-218 against.

Only six of 51 Senate Republicans joined the effort to question the voting results in Arizona. But while the House vote is not yet completely done, it is almost certain that a majority of House Republicans will align with Trump and object to Arizona’s votes. (The Arizona votes are a proxy for this broader certification issue and came up first because Congress goes through the states in alphabetical order.)

That’s not surprising. Republicans in the House, particularly since then-Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin retired after the 2018 elections, have been more aligned with Trump than the GOP bloc in the Senate. Both Ryan and McConnell had some tensions with the president. But Ryan’s successor as the top House Republican, Kevin McCarthy, has full-throatedly embraced Trump as the party’s leader.

Relatedly, rank-and-file members in each chamber tend to take cues from their leaders, and GOP leaders in the Senate were cooler to the anti-certification idea than in the House. The No. 2 Republican in the Senate leadership, John Thune of South Dakota, had publicly blasted the anti-certification move in the day leading up to Wednesday’s vote, and McConnell distanced himself from the effort this afternoon. In contrast, the two top House Republicans, McCarthy and Steve Scalise of Louisiana, were fairly circumspect before Wednesday and Scalise openly embraced the anti-certification push early on Wednesday.

Electoral considerations were also probably more of a consideration for House members than for senators — House members face the voters every two years, senators every six years — and thus GOP representatives have to be more worried about being challenged and defeated in a GOP primary than their Senate counterparts.

This dichotomy mirrors what happened last month regarding a lawsuit initiated by Republican officials in Texas that was aimed at getting the U.S. Supreme Court to reexamine the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. More than half of House GOP members (126) signed a brief backing that lawsuit, but there was not a companion brief filed by GOP senators.

Looking ahead, Republicans are in the minority in the House, a chamber that doesn’t give the minority much power. So in the short term, Biden doesn’t have to think too much about House Republicans. But the majority of Republicans in the House questioning Biden’s win is ominous in a democratic sense: Would a GOP-controlled House be unwilling to certify a win by Biden or another Democratic presidential candidate in 2024?

On the flip side, an overwhelming majority of Senate Republicans didn’t question the election results. I interpret this to mean that the Senate Republicans as a bloc and McConnell in particular are not fully on board with Trump’s undermining of democratic norms. But I don’t think this move portends that Senate Republicans will necessarily work with Biden. I would expect they will oppose much of his agenda, just as they did under McConnell’s leadership when Obama was president.

Another key difference is that House GOP leadership is supporting the aye vote.

You’re right, Nate. And I think what Perry just wrote is what I was trying to get at. At certain points today it seemed like impeachment might be back on the table, or the 25th Amendment might be invoked, but this House vote now underscores for me, anyway, that if there was an impeachment vote — a big if — it would more likely than not fall along familiar partisan lines. I thought might have changed after today’s events. I was wrong.

I don’t know what the baseline is, Sarah. But 126 Republicans in the House had signed a letter in support of an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election. So this perhaps isn’t too surprising.

There’s been lots of online chatter about: 1) Will Congress, particularly Democrats in the House, push for Trump’s impeachment and removal from office? and 2) Will the Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from power?

I don’t know the answer to these questions. But listening to Pelosi’s and Schumer’s speeches tonight, it sure sounds like they would rather just wait until Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. Pence and McConnell didn’t even directly criticize Trump by name, so it’s hard to see them trying to push Trump out.

What has happened today is that it now feels like many Republicans in Congress don’t feel the need to defend Trump over these next two weeks, however, and that is notable.

All good points, but to return to our earlier discussion about the GOP breaking away from Trump … doesn’t what is happening in the House kind of undermine that possibility in a very real way? I appreciate that I might not be taking into full consideration the differences in how the two chambers approach institutional legacy, but I guess I had anticipated more of a rebuke — red districts or not — given what we just saw in the Senate.

Well, Sarah, some of the differences are: 1) All the House members face reelection in two years; 2) They mostly come from some VERY red districts; 3) They generally haven’t been in office as long; 4) The House is supposed to be “the people’s chamber,” i.e. more populist and less concerned about its institutional legacy; 5) The Senate is run by McConnell, who can quash Republican dissent, while the House is run by Pelosi, who can’t.

There are still a number of House members who haven’t voted, but our colleague Ben Siegel at ABC notes that so far 98 Republicans or (46 percent of the conference) support the Arizona objection. The media hasn’t been paying as much attention to the whip count in the House because it’s a bigger chamber, but is it somewhat staggering that the percentage is that high, considering the tenor of the Senate vote? Or am I missing some important dynamics here?

If you expected this to be some sort of highly climactic and tightly scripted moment … well, you haven’t watched Congress before.

I’m pretty tired, and all I keep thinking is, “Wow, this has been a wild 24 hours,” over and over again.

A reminder, too, readers, that this is vote is going to take far longer than the Senate’s. There are simply far more members and with COVID-19 restrictions in place, the representatives are voting in waves.

Already 45 votes in support of the objection in the House so far. It’s a different beast than the Senate.

Perry and Sarah, your points about how new (relatively speaking) the six Republicans who voted for the objection to the Arizona results are to the Senate, and how many are from Southern states, I think are really important. There’s not a lot else that ties them together. If you look at the partisan lean of each GOP senator’s state, there isn’t really a pattern in there. For example, the 15 Republicans from the most red-leaning states all voted no. There’s not even a pattern in the senators’ Trump scores (how often each member votes along with Trump’s position).

And now the House is voting.

One other thing I’d add to what Perry said about the GOP senators who objected — as it stands in such stark contrast to the historic results in Georgia — many of these senators are from very southern states (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana), speaking to Trump’s continued dominance in other parts of the Sunbelt. Given what happened in Georgia, though, I wonder how a state like Texas fares moving forward. It didn’t flip blue in the 2020 presidential election, but it wasn’t that long ago that O’Rourke came close to unseating Cruz, and as you can see from our analysis of the 2020 margin, it is trending left overall.

Tonight’s big important story, as several of you have alluded to, is that the anti-certification bloc in the Senate was reduced by about half by today’s events. And it looks like we will have objections to just two states (Arizona and Pennsylvania) instead of at least three (an objection to Georgia had also been anticipated).

So what unifies these six members (Cruz, Hawley, Hyde-Smith, Kennedy, Marshall, Tuberville)? The most important thing is that they are all fairly new members. I think Cruz is most tenured among them, and he was first elected in 2012. Kennedy was class of 2016, Hyde-Smith and Hawley in the class of 2018, and Marshall and Tuberville were elected in 2020. Tuberville won in part because Trump endorsed him over Jeff Sessions in the primary.

At this point, we are now waiting for the House to close its debate and vote before Congress will reconvene in a joint session. Hawley, for one, has said that he will also object to Pennsylvania’s vote, but that he will cede his speaking time.

Pence says the yeas are six, not seven. I believe that Lummis was incorrectly counted as an aye by some sources, as there is agreement on the other six.

So I believe that was seven yes votes — Cruz, Hawley, Hyde-Smith, Kennedy, Lummis, Marshall, Tuberville — about half of the 14 or so that were originally expected.

Tuberville votes aye.

Lummis was also a yes, apparently.

https://twitter.com/AndrewSolender/status/1347016057081487360

Hyde-Smith, Kennedy and Marshall are also aye votes so far. I may be missing one or two because some of these are hard to hear.

And Hawley joins him, of course.

Cruz votes aye, becoming the first senator to object to the Electoral College vote in Arizona.

The Senate is getting ready to vote on the objections to Arizona’s Electoral College votes now.

Graham, after a reelection bid that he won by a clearer margin than polls predicted, has a little bit more leeway here to not be as much of a Trumpist.

Portman, who is up for reelection in 2022 in increasingly-red Ohio, is one of the more interesting swing votes in the new Senate, in terms of which Republicans might occasionally support Biden. Although he’s sometimes billed as a moderate, he voted with Trump around 90 of the time, suggesting a fairly high degree of partisanship.

Some further Senate flippers 🐬:

I was just thinking that it seems weird that Democrats, at least, are just using their time here as they would in any normal hearing. But I guess it does go back to what you said earlier, Nate, about politicians loving the sound of their own voice.

Honestly, the Democrats should just yield their time to force the Republicans to either support the Electoral College objections or condemn them (or to get this over with sooner).

Romney says today was about a “selfish man’s injured pride.” He is trashing Trump and, by implication, Cruz and Hawley as “complicit.” When he ran in 2018, Romney implied that he was going to be the new John McCain — conservative but willing to break with the party and very norms-focused. And he has lived up to that. And I think Romney is Trump’s least-favorite GOP senator, just as McCain was.

Mitt Romney just got a big round of applause for saying that the best way to honor voters who are upset that Trump lost and think the election was stolen is to “tell them the truth!”

Romney, a pretty unflappable guy, seems genuinely shaken tonight. He calls what happened an “insurrection, incited by the president of the United States.”

Yeah, I don’t know, Sarah. I suppose I’ll want to see the final count of objections. Another relevant question, given some of the reporting tonight, is whether roughly a third of Senate Republicans would vote to remove Trump under the 25th Amendment, which, when combined with what would probably be nearly-unanimous support from Democrats for removal, would be enough to get the Senate to the two-thirds required.

I’m still pretty torn on this, Sarah. It feels like two weeks from now we could be back to near-total rhetorical fealty to Trump — or that the break will be big and lasting. Right now, it feels like the momentum is behind the break being lasting. But it’s felt that way at a few moments over the last four years. Of course, now we’re at a point where Trump will be out of office in two weeks either way.

I want to return to something Micah brought up earlier — this idea that if the GOP turns on Trump, it’ll happen all at once. Hawley most certainly has not backed down from his objection, whereas others — such as Loeffler, Lankford and Blackburn — have.

It’s notable that Hawley didn’t back down, and maybe Cruz and Johnson won’t either. But originally as many as 14 GOP senators were going to object, that number looks like it will be a lot smaller now. Is it possible that even if not every GOP member backs down, we’re still seeing a break with Trump and maybe Trumpism? Or is it still too soon to tell?

Hawley is rather … creatively … trying to spin his objection the Electoral College vote as an alternative to violence, saying that Congress is the right forum for it. It certainly doesn’t sound as though he’s likely to rescind his objections to Arizona, which is what’s being debated now. But he’s also talking about Pennsylvania, which maybe implies he won’t delay things further by also objecting to Pennsylvania later.

“For those who say this is just a formality, I can’t say I agree,” says Hawley. Seems as if he is not backing away from his objection as other Republican senators have done.

Josh Hawley is currently speaking in the Senate. He was the first GOP senator to say he would object to the certification of the results.