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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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
McConnell shuts door on boosted $2,000 pandemic relief payment vote, says the Senate will not be 'bullied'
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell effectively shut the door on allowing a vote on a bill that would boost pandemic relief checks from $600 to $2,000.
Republicans like McConnell have previously said they are concerned about the half-trillion-dollar price tag of the $2,000 payments that would add to the national debt.
On the Senate floor Wednesday, McConnell attacked House Democrats for wanting to send a "boatload of cash" to people making six figures who aren't in need, saying it doesn't make sense to support Americans who haven't lost income due to the pandemic.
"The Senate's not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrats' rich friends who don't need the help," McConnell said.
He said Congress needs to send "smart targeted aid. Not another firehose of money."
McConnell also said he will not split the $2,000 relief payment bill from a repeal of Section 230 or the creation of an election fraud commission.
"The Senate is not going to split apart the three issues that President Trump linked together," McConnell said, which means the bill, if the Senate does intend to vote on it, is unlikely to ever become law.
Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer tried again Wednesday to unanimously pass the House standalone bill that swaps out the $600 payments for $2,000, but McConnell objected. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., also tried to pass the House bill unanimously, but GOP Sen. Pat Toomey objected.
- ABC News’ Mariam Khan
Trump tweets false conspiracy claim about Georgia’s secretary of state’s nonexistent brother
President Trump, who has spent a lot of time over the past week at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, took to Twitter to attack Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s brother -- except that Raffensperger doesn’t have a brother.
In a tweet Tuesday evening just before midnight, the president called Raffensperger and Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp a “complete disaster” as he peddled his baseless claims of election fraud.
“Now it turns out that Brad R’s brother works for China, and they definitely don’t want ‘Trump’” he wrote in a tweet. “So disgusting! #MAGA”
Trump’s tweet bolsters a popular theory in far-right conspiracy circles in recent days -- that the Georgia's secretary of state is related to a Huawei Enterprise Storage Solutions executive with the same name. Huawei has been blacklisted by the Trump administration for its ties China.
Raffensperger, however, does not have a brother. He has two sisters and neither work for Huawei.
The White House has not responded to multiple requests for comment on the tweet, and has not responded to whether the president plans to take it down, issue a correction or has apologized to the Georgia secretary of state.
-ABC News’ Ben Gittleson and Adam Kelsey