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

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

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

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

Following a briefing with his COVID-19 advisory team on Tuesday, Biden is expected to continue his criticism of the Trump administration in afternoon remarks on the coronavirus pandemic from Wilmington, Delaware, and home in on what his team has characterized as the lagging pace of vaccine distribution.

According to a transition official, Biden will provide an update on the current state of the pandemic and give a dire prediction that, tragically, infection and death rates will rise in the coming weeks. Biden is also expected to address the current administration falling short on its pace for vaccinations, the official said, as well as his plan to get 100 million vaccinations in 100 days.

Biden on Monday slammed the Trump administration for, he said, leaving security agencies "hollowed out" and for creating "roadblocks" for his transition team seeking access to key national security information -- a comment that acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller has pushed back on, saying the Biden team has already been given more interviews and documents than they initially requested.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, on Tuesday morning are slated to receive their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in Washington, D.C., where Harris may also comment on the incoming administration's vaccine distribution plans.

Trump, meanwhile, continued to contest the election on Twitter Tuesday morning -- with three weeks until Biden's inauguration -- criticizing Republican leadership as "pathetic," saying they "only want the path of least resistance" and "only know how to lose." He also attacked Republican lawmakers over their handling of the defensing funding bill as the Senate is expected to override Trump's presidential veto for the first time in his presidency by the end of the week.

After Trump changed course on Sunday and signed the coronavirus relief and government funding bill to avert a shutdown -- though not in time to prevent unemployment benefits to millions of Americans from lapsing -- the House of Representatives on Monday approved Trump's call to increase the coronavirus relief payments from $600 to $2,000.

But its fate in the Senate is uncertain. Senate Majority Leader McConnell has declined to reveal how he will proceed or even whether he’ll bring the proposal up for a vote. Democrats are seizing the opportunity to force Republicans into a difficult position -- either backing or defying Trump.

-ABC News' Molly Nagle and Ben Gittleson