“Republican senator Mitt Romney attacked Donald Trump on Wednesday, as Americans and the Republican party awoke to what appeared to be twin-Democrat victories in Georgia’s senatorial runoff races. Mr Romney, who has criticised the US president in the past, said Mr Trump had ‘disgraced’ the presidency and that it was no surprise Republican voters were turned away by allegations that the 2020 presidential race was ‘rigged’. ‘It turns out that telling the voters that the election is rigged is not a great way to turn out your voters,’ Mr Romney was reported as saying, landing blame on the outgoing president. ‘President Trump has disrespected the American voters, has dishonored the election system and has disgraced the office of the presidency,’ the Republican continued, promising to vote to confirm Joe Biden as president-elect in a joint of session on Congress on Wednesday” – The Independent.

“Hordes of Trump supporters rallied across Washington on Wednesday morning in a doomed effort to somehow negate Joe Biden’s victory, hours before Congress was set to certify the results and make Biden’s win even more fully irreversible. The rally marked the most desperate effort yet from disappointed and enraged Trump supporters, who have been leading a months-long campaign of disinformation and violence in tandem with a president who refuses to concede to reality. Thousands of Trump supporters headed to a park near the White House in the early morning for a chance to see the president himself speak, with hundreds lining up as early as 5:30 a.m.”

“Long Island Trump supporter Carmelo Prochilo said he came to Washington because he was ‘fed up with the bullshit,’ explaining he had become convinced that the election was stolen by reading the far-right Epoch Times and other websites. ‘They better start worrying about the 80 million people who voted for Trump and are armed,” Prochilo, who was draped in a flag promoting the Second Amendment, told The Daily Beast. ‘This will be a second American revolution.’ Trump was scheduled to speak to his supporters around 11 a.m., while other protesters planned to rally outside Congress at as lawmakers tallied the electoral vote, which has already been certified in each state. The prospect of violence hung over Wednesday’s rally, especially after four people were stabbed following a pro-Trump rally in Washington in December. Posters on pro-Trump forums like ‘The Donald’ have frequently discussed violating Washington’s gun laws and even attacking police, while early-arriving protesters on Tuesday walked around the city in body armor” – Daily Beast.

Add Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer in a tweet: “So far, every protester I’ve talked to has raised the prospect of violence / another civil war if Trump doesn’t win today.”

KDKA: “The suspect wanted for an explosion in Lawrenceville has turned himself in to police. KDKA reports the suspect is currently at the Allegheny County Jail awaiting arraignment.”

Even Mexico uses Voter I.D.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2021

Politico: “The objections Republican lawmakers plan to raise on Wednesday won’t stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. But the entire episode may make a powerful argument for abandoning the institution that makes Republicans competitive in presidential elections in the first place – the Electoral College. Likely to drag on for hours and draw wall-to-wall coverage, the objection by a group of Republican senators and House members to the Electoral College’s certification of the vote will cap an extraordinary, two-month-long effort by President Donald Trump and his allies to subvert the election’s outcome. But whereas those Republicans’ complaints previously focused public attention on baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, traditionalist Republicans fear that the endgame in Congress – unlike in the courts – will be to undermine the GOP-friendly institution of the Electoral College itself.”

“‘I think this is something that will come back to haunt Republicans,’ said Jon Gilmore, a Republican strategist in Arkansas and an adviser to the state’s governor, Asa Hutchinson. ‘It opens a Pandora’s box.’ Since the 1990s, Republican presidential candidates have won the popular vote only once – in George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004 – with Trump relying on the Electoral College for his victory in 2016 and having no chance of running even close to Biden without it this year. In the near future, the nation’s changing demographics, despite Trump’s modest inroads with people of color this year, appear likely to further put the popular vote out of Republicans’ reach, making the Electoral College all the more important to the GOP. Given the stakes, inadvertently delegitimizing the Electoral College would seem counterintuitive. To some Republicans, it’s nuts.”

Rewind the clock back almost a year. Trump was fucking guilty. Everyone knew he had done what the articles of impeachment had accused him of, which was attempting to coerce the president of Ukraine into announcing an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden for some poorly-specified allegations of corruption in the country, despite both having already been cleared.

Former Alabama Senator Doug Jones knew it. Jones won on kind of a fluke in a 2017 special election to serve out the rest of the six-year term Jeff Sessions had vacated so he could serve as Trump’s first Attorney General, faced with an extraordinarily weak Republican opponent, twice-impeached racist child molester, Roy Moore. Jones, from the second he won, had to know he was almost certainly doomed in 2020. As a Democrat representing a deep Red State, he faced a choice: Vote to acquit Trump in the hopes that MAGA voters in the state would remember it on election day and maybe reelect him, or stick with his conscience and principles and do the right thing.

Doug Jones did the right thing. Now former Senators Martha McSally, Cory Gardner, David Perdue, and soon-to-be former Senator Kelly Loeffler did not. They put party over country, even though anyone with a functioning brain knew Trump was unworthy of office, they knew he was dangerous, they knew he was incompetent, they knew that Mike Pence would be a much better leader for their party in contrast to the Donald. They voted to acquit so they could get reelected, making the calculation that MAGA voters would immediately destroy them in the primaries. And then they lost.

Daily Beast: “Can we call it a repudiation now? Because Donald Trump flew into Georgia Monday night to perform what he surely thought was his final rescue mission. Instead, if anything, his shocking antics in these last few days drove the turnout against him.”

“I know it’s just a few thousands votes and Jon Ossoff hasn’t officially won yet and this sounds a little sweeping, but fuck it, it wouldn’t stop the other side: On Election Night, America was sure it wanted rid of Trump, but wasn’t sure it wanted to hand the Democrats the keys to the car. After two more months of watching Trump try to set fire to our country, and watching Republicans hand him the match, Americans, or at least Georgians, said the hell with it. Democrats, it’s all yours. It was a staggeringly amazing night. Georgia has elected a Black man and in all likelihood a Jewish man to the United States Senate. Both of them liberal. Georgia. It’s astonishing. And the historical debt paid, especially in Raphael Warnock’s win: The pastor at Martin Luther King’s church is going to be a United States senator.”

“Emotions running high among McConnell-aligned Republicans early Wednesday morning – after reality of what transpired in Georgia settled in. May be the heat of the moment, but mood is for declaring war on Team Trump. Want to marginalize Trump as they marginalized Steve Bannon in 2017. The alternative, in their view? Disastrous political outcomes in the near term, with R primary fights making the establishment-tea party fights of 2010-12 look like a picnic” reports National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar.

Reuters: “Despite pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to help overturn his election loss, Vice President Mike Pence will stick to his ceremonial duties and not block Wednesday’s certification by Congress of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, advisers said. Trump ramped up pressure on Pence on Tuesday to block congressional certification of the November election results in an ongoing attempt to stay in power, after dozens of lawsuits by his campaign challenging the outcome failed in U.S. courts.”

“The vice president, a loyal lieutenant during the four years of Trump’s often chaotic presidency, has no plans to intervene and has told Trump he does not have the power to do so, even as he seeks to show support for the Republican president’s quest. Pence is set to preside over a joint session of Congress on Wednesday as it receives the results of the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the winner of presidential elections.”

Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have defeated incumbent Republican Georgia Senators and white collar criminals David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, ending Moscow Mitch’s reign as Senate Majority leader, per Cook Political report’s Dave Wasserman.

With new votes joining the tally, we are on a strong path. But even while we wait for more, let’s celebrate the extraordinary organizers, volunteers, canvassers & tireless groups that haven’t stopped going since Nov. Across our state, we roared. A few miles to go…but well done!

— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) January 6, 2021

The United States registered 3,478 fatalities from the coronavirus on Tuesday, the second highest daily number since the pandemic struck the United States one year ago, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

The number of people hospitalized also hit a new high, with 131,195 patients, stressing local hospital resources.  More than 214,000 new cases were confirmed on Tuesday, following a post-holiday high of 279,000 on January 2nd.

California reported 433 fatalities, according to Worldometers, with just under 37,000 new cases, on Tuesday.  Texas was second with 31,400 confirmed cases and 277 deaths.  Ten other states logged more than 100 fatalities.

On December 30th, the nation recorded 3,884 coronavirus deaths in the deadliest day of the pandemic.  The latest numbers reflect a new surge of cases likely due to holiday gatherings during which millions of Americans traveled to see family and friends.

“The New York Times report regarding comments Vice President Pence supposedly made to me today is fake news. He never said that. The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act. The November 3rd election was corrupt in contested states, and in particular it was not in accordance with the Constitution in that they made large scale changes to election rules and regulations as dictated by local judges and politicians, not by state legislators. This means that it was illegal. Our Vice President has several options under the U.S. Constitution. He can decertify the results or send them back to the states for change and certification. He can also decertify the illegal and corrupt results and send them to the House of Representatives for the one vote for one state tabulation” – Statement from Trump via New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, regarding her story that Pence told Trump he had no power to overturn the election.

Hip hop legend Dr. Dre suffered an aneurysm Monday and was rushed to the Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where he is in intensive care, People reports.

Born Andre Romelle Young, the 55-year-old rapper, music producer and entrepreneur was undergoing tests and monitoring.  His status was not released.

Dre was an early pioneer in hip hop and rap, first as a member of gangsta rap group NWA and later as a solo artist.  His latest business endeavor, Beats Electronics, was bought out by Apple in 2014.

I've seen enough. Raphael Warnock (D) defeats Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R) in GA's special Senate runoff. #GASEN

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) January 6, 2021

“Some 90 counties have completed counting. Most are small and show Loeffler well ahead, but in most, she is slightly underperforming the G.O.P. margins in the November Senate race.”  —Trip Gabriel of the New York Times.

“Republicans have taken a narrow lead in the tabulated vote, but the Democrats are clear favorites in both races. The overwhelming majority of remaining votes are in the Atlanta metro area, and while the race remains competitive, there’s no indication that the Republicans are poised to outperform expectations. The big Democratic vote left: the DeKalb County early vote. We expect these 170,000 votes to break for Ossoff by an 85-15 margin” – New York Times Georgia Senate runoff forecast summary.