Good afternoon! Today, @JakeLahut and I will be live-blogging the joint session of Congress to count slates of presidential electors, led by @VP Pence, where we expect GOP lawmakers to object to multiple states presidential electors for the first time

In addition to my explainer on the Electoral Count Act process for objecting to electors from yesterday, which you should go check out, here’s a little thread rundown of what we can expect to see today
https://t.co/FXBS62qsC9
As a quick terminology note, you may see some places refer to today’s events as “certification,” but Congress isn’t really certifying anything — they’re just counting slates of electors that have already been certified in the states
Pence’s role is purely procedural. There will be four tellers, two from each party, who will read out every state’s certificate of their electoral votes out of a special box. Unless one member from each chamber raises an objection, the states’ slate of electors is accepted
Per reporting from @poliitco and other outlets, it seems like the GOP has enough support from representatives and senators to object to slates of Biden electors from Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania (could be more or fewer depending on how the day goes)
When it comes to objections, objectors have to challenge each state at a time, in alphabetical order. They can’t challenge multiple states at once, all Biden states at once, or pick and choose which state they want to object to first out of the alphabetical order
Because Arizona is the 3rd state in alphabetical order, the first objection could come pretty soon in the afternoon. The joint session can’t move on to Arkansas until both chambers debate and vote on the objection to Arizona, can't move on to Hawaii after resolving Georgia, etc
When an objection is raised, the Senators leave the joint session in the House chamber, and go back to the Senate chamber. Each chamber debates the objection for no more than 2 hours before they vote — both have to vote by simple majority to reject a state’s slate of electors
The chambers just split up to go separately debate Paul Gosar and co.'s objection to Arizona's slate of 11 electors for Biden — follow along with us! https://t.co/GbaTsLsex2

More from Politics

THREAD:
Good afternoon, followers of frivolous election litigation. There's a last-minute entry in the competition for dumbest pre-inauguration lawsuit - a totally loony effort to apparently leave the entire USA without a government.

We'll start with the complaint in a minute.

But first, I want to give you a quick explanation for why I'm going to keep talking about these cases even after the inauguration.

They're part of an ongoing effort - one that's not well-coordinated but is widespread - to discredit our fundamental system of government.

It's a direct descendent, in more ways than one, of birtherism. And here's the thing about birtherism. It might have been a joke to a lot of people, but it was extremely pernicious. It obviously validated the racist "not good enough to be President" crowd. But that wasn't all.

Don't get me wrong, that was bad enough. Validating racism helped put the kind of shitbird who would tweet this from an official government account into power. But it didn't stop


(Also, if you agree with Pompeo about multiculturalism - the legendary melting pot - not being what this country is all about, you need to stop following me now. And maybe go somewhere and think about your life choices and what made you such a tool.)

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The UN just voted to condemn Israel 9 times, and the rest of the world 0.

View the resolutions and voting results here:

The resolution titled "The occupied Syrian Golan," which condemns Israel for "repressive measures" against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, was adopted by a vote of 151 - 2 - 14.

Israel and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/HoO7oz0dwr


The resolution titled "Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people..." was adopted by a vote of 153 - 6 - 9.

Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No' https://t.co/1Ntpi7Vqab


The resolution titled "Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan" was adopted by a vote of 153 – 5 – 10.

Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/REumYgyRuF


The resolution titled "Applicability of the Geneva Convention... to the
Occupied Palestinian Territory..." was adopted by a vote of 154 - 5 - 8.

Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/xDAeS9K1kW