FAUCI to Rand Paul: "Senator Paul, you do not know what you're talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially. You do not know what you're talking about."
FAUCI: "This is a pattern that Senator Paul has been doing now in multiple hearings based on no reality. He keeps talking about gain of function, this has been evaluated, multiple times by qualified people to not fall under the gain of function definition...."
FAUCI: "I have not lied before Congress, I have never lied, certainly not before Congress. Case closed."
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Sen Murkowski just spoke to reporters about her frustration that her GOP colleagues will block a January 6th Commish from being formed.
"It's important that there be a focus on the facts, and on the truth, and that may be unsettling, but we need to understand that," she said.
Standing just steps from Ofc Goodman, who directed rioters away from Senators being evacuated on Jan 6, Murkowski said "we just can't pretend that nothing bad happened, or that people just got too excitable. Something bad happened. And it's important to lay that out."
Murkowski on why she wants a Jan 6 Commission: "I think there's more to be learned. I want to know more. And I want to know and I don't want to know. I don't want to know, but I need to know."
Senate votes 51-50 to proceed to the COVID relief bill, with VP Harris breaking the tie.
Sen Johnson (R-WI) then objected to dispensing with the reading of the bill, so the clerk has begun reading all 628 pages.
The clerks have been reading the text of the COVID relief bill for 40 minutes, and they are on page 24 of 628.
And Sen @RonJohnsonWI is the only Senator sitting in the chamber (other than @ReverendWarnock who is presiding) as the clerk reads every word of the 628-page COVID relief bill, a reading he requested.
Meanwhile, @RandPaul is hanging out of the Senate floor (maskless) so that he can block the Senate from adjourning for the night & establishing a pro forma schedule. He's trying to make it harder for the Senate to (eventually) override a veto of the NDAA.
Everyone else is gone.
@RandPaul It's 1:11am, Rand is still there trying to make it harder for the Senate to get to a veto override vote (if one is needed).
He has said in the past that he'd like to see the NDAA expire and not be renewed (this would be the 60th year in a row it has passed).
I'm going to bed.
Here’s what was decided on a potential NDAA override in the Senate:
IF Trump vetoes the bill, & IF the House votes to override on Dec 28th, the Senate will come back on Dec 29th to start the process to do the same.
That process can take days, so goal = finish before noon Jan 3.
Sen Cotton on #DCStatehood: Dems "want two new democratic senators in perpetuity. The Democrats are angry at the American people for refusing to give them total control of the govt for going on a decade now, so they want to give the swamp as many senators as your state has."
COTTON: "They want to make Washington a state to rig the rules of our democracy and try to give the democratic party permanent power. But in doing so, the Democrats are committing an act of historical vandalism as grotesque as those committed by jacobin mobs roaming our streets."
COTTON: "Washington has just over 700,000 residents, more than Wyoming and Vermont, and about as many as Alaska. Doesn't this qualify Washington as a state? Well, if it did, we'd need a lot more states because Washington is just the 20th largest city in the country."