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

In a previously recorded campaign-style video posted to Twitter Thursday, President Donald Trump touted what he views as his many presidential accomplishments: producing COVID-19 vaccines, repairing the economy and stopping "endless foreign wars" in the Middle East.

When it comes to vaccines, Trump said, "Our most vulnerable citizens are already receiving the vaccine and millions of doses are quickly being shipped all across our country."
The president promised that "by early next year the vaccine will be available to every American."

The Trump administration had promised that 20 million people would be vaccinated by the end of the year. As of Wednesday morning, 2,794,588 Americans had received vaccine doses and 12.4 million doses had been distributed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Trump also boasted about the economy, saying, "Through the Paycheck Protection Program, we saved or supported more than 51 million American jobs, and we're doing numbers now like nobody's ever seen before, including having the highest stock market in the history of the world."

"We have slashed the unemployment rate from 14.7%, all the way down to 6.7%," Trump said. "Our economy is growing at the most rapid rate ever recorded. ... Nobody can compete with us in terms of going down less, and going up by far the fastest and the best. Whenever America's challenged, we always rise to the occasion."

Many economists, however, have argued that the economy is rebounding in a K-shape, as opposed to a V-shape, with the rich getting richer and the working class still struggling.

The president also touched on foreign affairs.

"We have secured our borders and paused immigration to protect American workers," Trump said. "And after years of endless foreign wars we are signing historic peace deals in the Middle East. It's all ending in the Middle East. We have to hope it keeps going. It's so easy if you know what you're doing."

While Trump has successfully pushed to normalize relations between Israel and many Middle Eastern countries, it's not accurate to say they are "peace deals" and they have come at the expense of Palestinians and aligned the countries against Iran. Iran, and its nuclear ambitions, continues to be a thorn in America's side. Trump has drawn down forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, but promised negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban fell apart and ISIS and al-Qaida affiliates are taking advantage of the insecurity in Syria, Northern Africa and elsewhere.

ABC News' Elizabeth Thomas contributed to this report.