President Joe Biden has signed a bill that will help avert the possibility of another January 6 on the legislative side into law.
Besides the attack on the Capitol incited by Trump and carried out by large groups of his supporters, January 6 saw Republicans in Congress try and block the certification of key electoral votes Joe Biden won in the presidential election held months prior. Before Pence affirmed he would abide by commanding legal demands for his role in the process of Congress certifying the results, there was also uncertainty about the possibility of other avenues of procedural attack. The then-vice president faced pressure from Trump and other sources to take procedural action to upend the confirmation of Biden’s win, but there was no widely recognized legal foundation for doing so. The bill Biden signed deals with both of these areas.
Included in a funding bill Biden signed that covers the bulk of the federal government for the rest of this fiscal year are changes to the federal rules for certifying presidential election results. Before, the support of only a member from each chamber was needed for an objection to a state’s electoral votes to move to debate and a vote, potentially allowing the duly documented outcome of an election to fall victim to partisan infighting in Congress. Now, it will be one-fifth of each chamber, meaning 87 members of the House and 20 Senators. (An earlier version passed by the House would have required one-third of each chamber.) The measures also clarify the strictly procedural nature of responsibilities held by the vice president in certifying election results. Contrary to Trump’s complaints, a clarification doesn’t somehow mean Pence could’ve stopped Biden’s win all along.
The wide-reaching funding bill to which these legislative updates were attached drew intense complaints from House Republicans, some of whom pledged to punitively oppose legislative priorities from any GOP Senator who voted for it. In the federal funding itself, comments from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) highlighted components like an increase of $13.4 billion for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a federal opportunity for grocery help.
Donald was also predictably mad, turning to his alternative social media platform Truth Social with a diatribe including another disparagement of Mitch McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao, who was a Cabinet secretary in Donald’s own administration. “Something is going on with Mitch McConnell and all of the terrible and virtually automatic “surrenders” he makes to the Marxist Democrats, like on the $1.7 Trillion “Ominous” Bill,” Trump angrily said. (It remains objectively ridiculous to describe mainstream Democratic Party moves as “Communist” or “Marxist.” Dictionaries — what a concept!) “Could have killed it using the Debt Ceiling, or made it MUCH better in the Republican House. Nobody can be this stupid. Perhaps it has to do with his wife, Coco Chow, and their BIG relationships with China – A HISTORIC conflict of interest like no other!”
