Pelosi elected to 4th term as House speaker

She’s the third speaker in the last 25 years to win with less than 218 votes.

President Donald Trump is slated to hand over control of the White House to President-elect Joe Biden in 17 days.


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Overview: Trump signs pandemic relief after unemployment aid lapses, $2000 checks go to House vote

After days of opposition and hours before the federal government was going to shut down, Trump signed a $2.3 trillion bill into law Sunday night to avert a government shutdown and extend $900 billion in coronavirus pandemic relief -- but millions of American will be impacted by his delay.

Trump’s Sunday night signature came after two critical unemployment programs lapsed over the weekend, leaving roughly 14 million Americans who have relied on the income without a week of benefits during the holiday season. While the current bill shells out $600 direct payments for most Americans, Trump is breaking from his party by continuing his push to bring that amount to $2,000.


In a Sunday night statement announcing he had signed the bill, Trump -- who has sat on the sidelines of negotiations for months -- also called on Congress to make more revisions to cut down excess spending, saying "wasteful items need to be removed" from the bill and that he would send back a “redlined” version.


The move is forcing Senate Republicans, many who did not support more direct payments, to say whether they stand with Trump on increasing payments and revisiting the bill’s language or by their previous positions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday is bringing a vote on a stand-alone bill to increase economic impact payments to $2,000 to the House floor, and while it’s expected to pass the House, it’s unclear whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will take up the measure in the Senate.

The president has no public events on his schedule as he continues his holiday from Mar-a-Lago, and threatens, via Twitter, a challenge to the counting of the Electoral College vote in Congress on Jan. 6.

Biden, meanwhile, is pressing forward with his transition with less than a month until his inauguration. The president-elect is slated to meet with members of his national security and foreign policy agency review teams on Monday and deliver afternoon remarks on their "findings and the key challenges his administration will inherit" from Wilmington, Delaware.


2K relief payment vote blocked again

There was more drama Thursday over an attempt to have the Senate vote on House-passed legislation that would send qualifying Americans $2,000 stimulus payments.

Once again, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quashed an attempt -- this one by Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. -- to call up and vote on the House-passed legislation.

McConnell claimed House Speaker Nany Pelosi and Sanders (the lead sponsor of the House-passed bill in the Senate) were supporting "socialism for the rich" after experts calculated that higher-income earners (up to $350,000 a year) would stand to get some federal relief under the House-passed plan. But the Republican leader made no mention of Trump or Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., also calling for those higher payments.

Schumer fired back, saying he never heard Republicans complain about "socialism for the rich" when they were giving big corporate tax breaks.

Sanders, in his retort, was ready with stats from McConnell's home state, noting that "more than 22% of children" live in poverty and thousands of workers earn sparse wages, saying that "someone should ask them" what they would do with $2,000 payments.

"All I am asking Senator McConnell is give us a vote!" Sanders said. "Give us a vote! What is the problem? What is the problem with having the American people see how their senators vote.”

-ABC News’ Trish Turner