{"id":101290,"date":"2021-01-03T13:42:06","date_gmt":"2021-01-03T07:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/dozens-of-house-senate-republicans-join-likely-futile-effort-to-reject-biden-victory\/"},"modified":"2021-01-04T01:37:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-03T19:37:00","slug":"dozens-of-house-senate-republicans-join-likely-futile-effort-to-reject-biden-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/dozens-of-house-senate-republicans-join-likely-futile-effort-to-reject-biden-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Dozens of House, Senate Republicans Join Likely Futile Effort to Reject Biden Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 100 Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives and a dozen senators say they will join an almost assuredly futile effort Wednesday to try to block certification of the Electoral College vote showing that Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the November election. <\/p>\n

The certification of the 306-232 Electoral College vote favoring Biden, a fixture on the Washington political scene for nearly a half century, is the last step before he is set to be inaugurated as the country\u2019s 46th president on January 20.<\/p>\n

Both chambers of Congress would need to uphold the challenges to Biden\u2019s victory for the election outcome to be upended. But Democrats narrowly control the House and are certain to certify Biden\u2019s win, while the Democratic minority in the Senate, along with some Republicans who have acknowledged Biden\u2019s win, are likely to do the same in the Senate.<\/p>\n

Trump, who for weeks has made baseless claims that he was defrauded of election to a second four-year term, continues to cheer on protests against his loss, an outcome that will make him the fifth U.S. president in the country\u2019s 245-year history to lose a re-election bid after a single term in office.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn attempt to steal a landslide win,\u201d Trump said on Twitter over the weekend. \u201cCan\u2019t let it happen!\u201d<\/p>\n

He tweeted a video calling for his supporters to mass in Washington on Wednesday to protest certification of Biden as the election winner, saying it \u201ccould be the biggest event\u201d in the city\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\n
\"President<\/figure>
President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, in West Palm Beach, Florida, Dec. 31, 2020.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trump has lost dozens of court challenges to the outcome of the election, including twice at the Supreme Court. In the latest instance, a federal appellate court Saturday night upheld the dismissal, by a Trump-appointed lower court judge, of a lawsuit seeking to give Trump\u2019s vice president, Mike Pence, power to reject Biden\u2019s winning electoral slates in several states and instead choose slates of Trump electors to overturn the election outcome and keep him in power.<\/p>\n

Pence is set to preside Wednesday in what is, at most times, a ceremonial role at a joint session of Congress over the tabulation of the electoral votes that have already been certified by officials in the country\u2019s 50 states and national capital city of Washington.<\/p>\n

On Saturday evening, Marc Short, Pence\u2019s chief of staff, said in a statement that the vice president \u201cshares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vice president, the statement continued, \u201cwelcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6th.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Vice<\/figure>
Vice President Mike Pence speaks during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, Dec. 22, 2020, in West Palm Beach, Florida.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But ultimately, as has occurred several other times in U.S. history, Pence, as vice president and the presiding officer over the Senate, will be tasked with announcing his own defeat to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and that of Trump to Biden, once the electoral vote is counted and the Republican challenges heard and presumably rejected.<\/p>\n

Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri announced last week that he would challenge the Biden victory, coupled with the House protest of dozens of lawmakers led by Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama. Hawley\u2019s protest, specifically challenging Biden\u2019s victory in the eastern state of Pennsylvania with 20 electoral votes, was joined Saturday by 11 other Republican senators led by Ted Cruz of Texas and included four senators elected in November being sworn into the new session of Congress on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The 11 called for a 10-day audit of election returns in \u201cdisputed states,\u201d saying they would vote to reject the electors from those states until the audit was completed.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, did not join the protest against the vote in his state, saying that \u201ca fundamental, defining feature of a democratic republic is the right of the people to elect their own leaders. The effort by Senators Hawley, Cruz, and others to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in swing states like Pennsylvania directly undermines this right.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the vocal Trump supporters, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, told NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d<\/em> show on Sunday that he joined the protest against the Electoral College outcome because, \u201cWe\u2019ve got tens of millions of people who think this election was stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n

But another Trump supporter, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said proposing a commission two weeks ahead of the inauguration \u201cis not effectively fighting for President Trump. It appears to be more of a political dodge than an effective remedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

As they announced their protest on Saturday, Cruz and the other senators acknowledged the presumed futility of their effort, saying, \u201cWe fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise\u201d against overturning Biden\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n

The Senate\u2019s top Republican lawmaker, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, after weeks of refusing to acknowledge Biden\u2019s victory, congratulated Biden and Harris as the election winners after the Electoral College votes were cast in mid-December. McConnell was unsuccessful in urging Republican lawmakers to forego challenging the outcome.<\/p>\n

Trump also tweeted Sunday morning about the outcome in the southern state of Georgia, where he lost to Biden by just under 12,000 votes out of the 5 million ballots that were cast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia,\u201d Trump said. \u201cHe was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the \u2018ballots under table\u2019 scam, ballot destruction, out of state \u2018voters\u2019, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!\u201d <\/p>\n

Raffensperger, a Republican, replied, \u201cRespectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"FILE<\/figure>
FILE – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 30, 2020.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Georgia vote was counted initially, and then twice recounted, with Biden winning all three times, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate carried the state since 1992.<\/p>\n

Jody Hice, a Georgia Republican congressman being sworn in for a fourth term on Sunday, was re-elected on the same ballot as Trump lost in the state.<\/p>\n

But Hice said in a tweet that his first concern in the new Congress would be to \u201cFight for fair elections by objecting to fraud on Jan 6! Liberty must be defended!\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 100 Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives and a dozen senators say they will join an almost assuredly futile effort Wednesday to try to block certification of the Electoral College vote showing that Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the November election. The certification of the 306-232 Electoral College […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101291,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}