OK — this is a thread about the Electoral College process on Capitol Hill. I put it in Playbook PM. Tomorrow is my last edition of Playbook PM.
IN CASE YOU FORGOT, to launch a challenge to a state’s Electoral College’s results, a member of the House and a member of the Senate need to sign on. This has happened three times in the last 20 years: 2001, 2005 and 2017 -- all by Democrats.
IN OTHER WORDS, THIS ISN’T A ONCE-IN-A-CENTURY procedure -- it’s relatively common, but it never works.
HERE’S HOW IT WILL GO DOWN: A member of the House and Senate each need to sign on to a challenge to a state’s results. If that happens, the House and Senate each vote on the challenge. Both chambers have to vote affirmatively to accept the challenge.
Neither chamber will accept a challenge-- period. Won’t happen. Just like if you jump out the window and flap your arms, you won’t fly -- Congress will reject any challenge if it even gets that far because the Democratic House will not vote to overturn the electoral results.
THE VP TYPICALLY presides over the certification in his role as the president of the Senate. @jonathanvswan had an excellent report this morning about how TRUMP is turning on everyone, and how he would view PENCE certifying the results of the election as “the ultimate betrayal.”
@jonathanvswan WELL, PENCE DOESN’T HAVE TO if he doesn’t want to. If PENCE declines to show up, Sen. CHUCK GRASSLEY, the 87-year-old Iowa Republican who is president pro tempore of the Senate, does it in his place. No sweat, no problem.
@jonathanvswan IN 1969, HUBERT HUMPHREY declined to preside over the certification because he was the losing presidential candidate.
So Deschler’s Precedent says this: “In the absence of the President of the Senate, the President pro tempore of the Senate presides over the joint session to count the electoral votes for President and Vice President.”
This is the precedent that was set in 1969. (h/t this terrific CRS report about the process by which Congress will certify the Electoral College bit.ly/3plopQN
OF COURSE, declining to show up is probably as bad as showing up and certifying the results, in TRUMP’S mind.
THE LARGER MORAL QUESTION is can PENCE preside if he has already been strategizing with the opposition.
2 UNANSWERED questions that may have to be decided by Congress’ rules authorities in the coming days and weeks:
Can Congress vote to reject PENCE as the presiding officer because he has a stake in the outcome? Congress can practically do anything it wants with a majority vote.
2) If PENCE does preside and goes to bat for TRUMP, can Congress overturn an unjust or improper ruling? This is also an open question.
JAN. 6 will be a long day, given TRUMP has a crew of House Republicans willing to follow him down this idiotic rabbit hole. But this is going to fail in a spectacular fashion.
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G’morning from the Capitol, where we’re about to have a pro forma session in both chambers during which nothing will get done. This begins at 9
In the meantime, here’s what we said in Playbook this morning.
Headline: "Cyclone of uncertainty and chaos"
WITH 27 DAYS LEFT IN HIS PRESIDENCY, and the nation on the doorstep of Christmas, DONALD JOHN TRUMP has sucked Americans into a violent cyclone of uncertainty and chaos.
HE IS PARDONING CRIMINALS at a breakneck clip. Last night it was MANAFORT, who was in prison on tax charges, R STONE and CHARLES KUSHNER, IVANKA's father in law. Earlier this week crooked politicians and other unseemly actors. @BenSasse called the pardons “rotten to the core.”
OK — so Playbook PM is about to come out. And i regret to inform you that no one has a damn clue what the president is up to.
Not Republicans. Not much of his White House. no one.
Some people say Trump is in burn it down mode. Some people say he isn’t going to veto this package.
Who cares, frankly. No one knows what he is doing or what goal he’s driving toward.
Maybe he comes out today en route to FL and says he was kidding about the veto thing -- but maybe not, and he’s not running a corner store, he’s running the world’s most important country in the middle of a pandemic, so we can’t work with maybes.
We are in the beginnings of a full-blown legislative crisis. It's two days before Christmas. Congress is home. We're in a pandemic. Unemployment insurance runs out on Saturday. Govt shuts down Monday. And the president is suggesting he'll blow up a bipartisan bill to avert this.
I laid out some of these thoughts in Playbook this morning, but I have further thoughts now.
Ppl counting on @realDonaldTrump backing down. Maybe. He is completely detached from the legislative process, & has no relationships w principals. So it's tough to know what he thinks
Irony of this whole thing is @realDonaldTrump could've gotten $2,000 stimulus checks if he was even remotely involved in this process. He wasn't even an observer. @senatemajldr fought just to get @stevenmnuchin1 in the room
TRUMP is throwing an awful lot of weight behind 2 efforts that, if you’re charitable, you can say he is not certain to win, but if you’re realistic, you can definitively declare he is likely to lose in a publicly humiliating fashion.
FIRST, TRUMP says he is going to veto the National Defense Authorization Act -- which has passed every year for 59 years.
Playbook this AM: IN CASE IT WASN’T PLAINLY OBVIOUS, Senate and House negotiators hope to announce a Covid relief deal today. government shuts down tomorrow night and getting this $2 trillion package through Congress in one day will be a heavy lift, but will be necessary.
There seems to be a recognition that the government needs to be funded by Monday morning, and that means a vote on this big package in the House and Senate on Sunday -- or another stopgap.
.@senatemajldr spoke when the Senate convened at 11 a.m. "There's a kind of gravitational pull here in Congress, where unless we are careful any major negotiation can easily slide into an unending catalog of disagreements. Let's guard against that."
GOOD FRIDAY MORNING. Here’s how your American government is ending the year -- and the TRUMP presidency.
-- THE GOVT runs out of spending authority this evening at midnight. Typically, the govt avoids shutting down officially if there is a spending bill on the horizon, so we may be spared that drama. Divided govt began in 2019 w a shutdown, and it may end with another funding lapse.
-- CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS are preparing the second-largest federal rescue package in our nation’s history, and no one has seen it just days before it will get a vote.