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 heads back to DC, Biden plans pre-inaugural COVID-19 memorial
Trump is heading back to Washington, D.C. from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida Thursday morning, a day ahead of schedule -- missing his annual lavish New Year's Eve party.
He had always planned to return ahead of Wednesday's joint session of Congress where the Electoral College votes are certified but now will also be in the capital for New Year's Eve. It's unclear why he changed his plans, and the White House provided no comment.
Meanwhile, the The Presidential Inaugural Committee has announced that on the eve of the Biden inauguration it will host a "memorial to remember and honor the lives lost to COVID-19 in cities and towns across the country.”
The portion of the ceremony that takes place in Washington will include lighting around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. "It will be the first-ever lighting around the Reflecting Pool to memorialize American lives lost," according to the committee.
In the Senate, relief payments continue to be front and center even after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seemed to slam the door on voting exclusively on the $2,000 relief payments Wednesday.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and others may still try -- likely without success -- to force his hand by continuing to object to the Senate voting on the defense bill veto override alone. The Senate is expected to vote to end debate by Friday, bringing the vote to override the veto as late as Saturday and keeping lawmakers in Washington over the New Year holiday.
For his part, McConnell, who said that relief checks were for Democrats’ “rich friends who don’t need the help," plans to try to couple the $2,000 relief payments with other issues Trump has demanded Congress act on, including eliminating protections for tech companies and investigating baseless claims of election fraud. The strategy will likely serve as "poison pills" for Democrats, who won’t vote for it.
In the end, those $2,000 checks are not expected to be approved with most Republicans standing in the way, but Congress is expected to override Trump’s veto of the defense measure -- the first veto override of Trump's presidency. Taken together, the two actions amount to a very rare bucking of this president by members of his own party.
-ABC News' Mariam Khan, Trish Turner and Beatrice Peterson
Kemp responds to Trump's calls for him to resign
In a media availability at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta this afternoon, Gov. Brian Kemp responded to the president saying he should resign via Twitter Wednesday morning.
When first asked about the president's tweet, Kemp said he was focused on the coronavirus -- ensuring there are enough hospital beds and getting the vaccine distributed and administered across the state.
When pressed on Trump's call for him to resign, Kemp said, "I've supported the president. I've said that many times. I've worked as hard as anybody in the state on his reelection up through November the 3rd."
"I've supported the legal process that him or any other campaign can go through in that state, but at the end of the day, I also have to follow the laws in the Constitution," he added.
-ABC News' Quinn Scanlan
46 left-leaning groups call on Biden to focus on ethics on 1st day in the White House
A coalition of 46 left-leaning groups including Greenpeace, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), MoveOn has issued a new letter calling on Biden and Vice President-elect Harris to focus on “democracy reform policies.”
The coalition is urging the Biden-Harris Administration to sign “a robust ethics order for your appointments on day one of your administration to prevent conflicts of interest, undue lobbyist influence, and ensure transparency to guarantee that your administration is focused solely on working for all Americans.”
Some of the demands from the groups include protecting voting rights, ending the power of big money in politics, restoring ethics and accountability in the capital, and protecting the rule of law through checks and balances.
- ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson
Giuliani continues last-ditch efforts, repeats false narratives before Georgia Senate subcommittee
President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, spoke before members of the Georgia state Senate and repeated his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and the fantasy that his client won the state of Georgia and the general election altogether. No lawmaker asked him a question following his remarks.
The hearing, which Trump tweeted was being broadcast on Newsmax and OANN this morning, was before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Election Law -- the same subcommittee that Giuliani spoke before on Dec. 3, right before he was diagnosed with coronavirus.
-ABC News’ Quinn Scanlan
Bipartisan group of senators: 'It is time to move forward'
From the bipartisan group who hammered out the COVID relief compromise, an appeal to senators to accept the Electoral College results, writing in a statement, " It is time to move forward."
Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Susan Collins, R-Maine, Mark Warner, D-Va., Bill Cassidy, R-La., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Angus King, I-Maine, Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., issued the following statement on the upcoming Congressional certification of the 2020 Presidential election results:
"The 2020 election is over. All challenges through recounts and appeals have been exhausted. At this point, further attempts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election are contrary to the clearly expressed will of the American people and only serve to undermine Americans' confidence in the already determined election results. The voters have spoken, and Congress must now fulfill its responsibility to certify the election results. In two weeks, we will begin working with our colleagues and the new Administration on bipartisan, common sense solutions to the enormous challenges facing our country. It is time to move forward."
-ABC News' Trish Turner