Tag Archives: Constitution

Ohio passes Abortion rights to be amended to the constitution

Abortion-Issue-1-Ohio

Important Takeaways:

  • 5 reactions to passage of Ohio Issue 1 enshrining abortion right into state constitution
  • Ohio voters approved a ballot measure that will amend the constitution to make abortion a constitutional right…
  • With 99% of the vote reporting, 56.6% of Ohio voters supported Issue 1, while 43.4% rejected it. The text of Issue 1 declares that “Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on (1) contraception; (2) fertility treatment; (3) continuing one’s own pregnancy; (4) miscarriage care; and (5) abortion.”
  • Ohio has become the fourth state to approve a constitutional right to abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court determined in the June 2022 Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization ruling that the U.S. Constitution does not contain a right to abortion. California, Michigan and Vermont voted in favor of similar ballot measures last year.
  • Ohio also differs from the other states because it passed pro-life protections into law, although the six-week abortion ban approved by the state government was put on hold by the courts at the time of the referendum. The pro-life group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America estimates that the six-week abortion ban, which is now overruled by Issue 1, would prevent an estimated 14,910 abortions from taking place on an annual basis.

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Say What!?! New Mexico Gov. says “no constitutional right…is intended to be absolute;” Puts 30-day ban on gun carry for self-defense

Important Takeaways:

  • New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham Issues Order Suspending Concealed Carry for Self-Defense
  • New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) issued an order Friday suspending, for 30 days, state residents’ rights to carry guns for self-defense in Albuquerque.
  • The ban applies to concealed and open carry.
  • When questioned about her order’s impact on the Second Amendment, the governor stressed her belief that “no constitutional right … is intended to be absolute.”
  • The order came days after an 11-year-old boy was murdered in Albuquerque.

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What have we become? CBN article points out “We’re losing our Freedom and our Choice”

Statue of Liberty

Important Takeaways:

  • We’re Losing Our Freedom and Our Choices: Has the Constitution Been Effectively ‘Terminated’?
  • The Stats Don’t Lie: Freedom Has Been in Decline
  • Global studies show that for most of the world, freedom has been in decline for many years. Add to that an economy consolidating under larger companies with consumers seeing their purchasing choices restricted.
  • There was once a sense that freedom was winning and expanding across the globe. Now the future is looking less free, with fewer rights and fewer choices about how we live our lives.
  • Christian civil liberties attorney John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute takes the radical view that the Constitution has been effectively terminated because so much of it is now regularly ignored.
  • He says the many heavily armed government agencies and local police forces constitute a standing army on US soil, ready to raid homes in violation of the fourth amendment.
  • “The IRS has 4,500 guns, 5 million rounds of ammunition,” Whitehead said. “The Veterans Administration has 11 million rounds of ammo. The Department of Health and Human Services, believe it or not, has 4 million rounds of ammo. The Social Security Administration has 800,000 rounds of ammo for their special agents and guns.”
  • Even NASA has a SWAT Team. Since 1980, SWAT raids have risen from 3,000 a year to 80,000.
  • No Free Speech if Someone’s Feelings Are Hurt
    • The First Amendment, which was intended to protect speech the majority doesn’t like, no longer prevents people from being censored, canceled, de-platformed, or even de-banked.
    • A Qualtrics study found that most Americans under the age of 30 favor censorship if free speech hurts someone’s feelings.
  • One-Third of Americans Would Like a Dictator
    • A Penn State poll found that most Americans believe they have lost more personal freedoms in the past 10 years than they have gained, while another survey found that one-third of Americans think having “a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections would be a good system of government.”
  • Jaroslav Flidr, told CBN News he never expected the Free World to turn out like this, and said he’s especially upset that many Americans seem okay with a loss of rights when it’s used against their political enemies.
  • Flidr said, “People whose rights are being removed, they really do not perceive it that way. That’s why they sometimes actually almost see it as a benefit. It’s a beneficial process because sometimes these rights are taken from people they don’t like and they applaud it. And in situations like that I always tell them, ‘Yeah, it might be actually pleasing now. Just wait until you are the object of this process when your rights are violated. When it’s done to you, you won’t find it as much fun as you’re finding it now.'”

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Trump ally Republican congressman Perry declines interview with Capitol riot panel

By Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Representative Scott Perry, an ally of former President Donald Trump, on Tuesday said he would not provide information requested by a congressional committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Perry, a Republican, said on Twitter that he would not sit for an interview with the panel and would not provide electronic communications it had requested, including messages he exchanged with Trump’s lawyers.

“I stand with immense respect for our Constitution, the rule of law, and the Americans I represent who know that this entity is illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives,” Perry said.

An appeals court ruled earlier this month that the Jan. 6 Select Committee was legitimate and entitled to see White House records Trump has tried to shield from public view.

A spokesman for the committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Perry.

On Monday the committee publicly released a letter to Perry that asked him to voluntarily cooperate.

The committee said it was seeking information about Trump’s attempts to oust Jeffrey Rosen, the acting head of the U.S. Justice Department during the closing weeks of his presidency, and replace him with Jeffrey Clark, an official at the time who tried to help Trump overturn his election defeat.

The letter marked a new phase for the committee’s lawmakers, who have so far not publicly demanded information from Republican colleagues who supported Trump’s efforts to retain power after losing the November 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Perry and other Republican lawmakers met with Trump ahead of the attack and discussed how they could block the formal certification by Congress on Jan. 6 of Biden’s victory.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)

U.S. Supreme Court wrestles with Puerto Rico’s exclusion from benefits program

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday tackled the question of whether a decision by Congress five decades ago to exclude Puerto Rico from a federal program that provides benefits to low-income elderly, blind and disabled people was unlawful.

Some of the nine justices posed tough questions during arguments in the case to the lawyer for the U.S. government, which has appealed a lower court ruling that Puerto Rico’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program exclusion violated a U.S. Constitution mandate that laws apply equally to everyone.

But it remained unclear whether the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, ultimately will rule in favor of Puerto Rican resident Jose Luis Vaello-Madero, who received SSI benefits when he lived in New York but lost eligibility when he moved to Puerto Rico in 2013.

Many Puerto Ricans have long complained that the Caribbean island’s residents are treated worse than other Americans despite being U.S. citizens. Puerto Rico, which is not a state, is the most-populous of the U.S. territories, with about 3 million people.

SSI benefits are available to American citizens living in any of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the Northern Mariana Islands, but not the territories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam.

If Vaello-Madero wins, more than 300,000 Puerto Rico residents could become eligible for the benefit at a cost that the U.S. government has estimated at $2 billion annually.

The Supreme Court has been instrumental in defining the legal status of Puerto Ricans dating to a series of rulings starting more than a century ago called the Insular Cases, some suffused with racist language. The rulings endorsed the notion that the people of newly acquired U.S. territories could receive different treatment than citizens living in U.S. states.

Vaello-Madero’s case gives the justices an opportunity to revisit those rulings. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed interested in doing so.

“Why shouldn’t we just admit that the Insular Cases were incorrectly decided?” Gorsuch asked.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose parents were from Puerto Rico, mentioned the history of Puerto Ricans being treated as second-class U.S. citizens.

“Puerto Ricans are citizens and the Constitution applies to them. Their needy people are being treated different than the needy people in the 50 states,” Sotomayor said.

The federal government’s central argument is that the congressional decision to exclude Puerto Rico was rational based on the fact that Puerto Ricans do not pay many federal taxes, including income tax.

Conservative justices wondered about the repercussions of a ruling favoring Vaello-Madero including whether other benefits would have to be extended to residents of U.S. territories.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that if there was “equal treatment across the board” then questions would be raised over whether Puerto Ricans should pay federal income taxes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Vaello-Madero’s lawyer made “compelling policy arguments” but noted that a clause of the Constitution specifically allows Congress to treat territories differently than states.

Kavanaugh said it is a part of the Constitution that “people would want to change” but that it is not the court’s role to do that.

Vaello-Madero is 67 years old and disabled. The government sued him in federal court in Washington in 2017 seeking more than $28,000 for SSI payments he received after moving to Puerto Rico.

Congress decided not to include Puerto Rico when it enacted the program in 1972. Puerto Ricans are eligible for a different government program, called Aid to the Aged, Blind and Disabled, that allows for more local control but not as much federal funding.

The appeal originally was filed by Republican former President Donald Trump’s administration. His Democratic successor Joe Biden has continued the appeal while at the same time urging Congress to extend SSI to Puerto Rico.

A provision extending SSI benefits to Puerto Rico is being considered as part of Democratic-backed social spending legislation being crafted in Congress. Enactment of the provision would limit the importance of the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling, due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Analysis: Wide array of opponents prepare to fight Biden vaccine mandate

By Nandita Bose and Tom Hals

(Reuters) – The country’s first national COVID-19 vaccine mandate, expected to be unveiled by the Biden administration this week, is likely to unleash a frenzied legal battle that will hinge on a rarely used law and questions over federal power and authority over healthcare.

States, companies, trade groups, civil liberty advocates and religious organizations are expected to rush to court with demands to stop the mandate in its tracks. Two dozen Republican state attorneys general have already vowed to use “every legal option” to fight the mandate and 40 Republican lawmakers said on Wednesday they were preparing their own challenge.

Details of the vaccine and testing requirements for private employers remain under wraps. The administration has said that the rule is coming and that it requires certain businesses to “develop, implement and enforce” a mandatory policy that allows employees to either choose to get vaccinated or undergo regular testing and wear a face covering at work.

For opponents, the general principle could not be more clear: the administration’s zeal for fighting the pandemic with vaccinations and testing has trampled the law and the Constitution.

“There will be so much litigation it will never see the light of day,” said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston.

Some legal experts, however, said protecting against a historic public health crisis provides a compelling justification for the mandate against constitutional challenges that claim it infringes on individual or state rights.

COVID-19 vaccine requirements by colleges, cities, states and companies have generally been upheld. The Supreme Court said on Friday that Maine could impose its mandate on healthcare workers, even without the usual religious exemptions.

However, the national vaccine and testing rule, which will likely run hundreds of pages, will differ in important ways from existing vaccine requirements.

It will be issued as an emergency temporary standard (ETS) by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which regulates workplace dangers. Businesses with at least 100 employees must enforce the rule on their staff or face penalties.

To issue an ETS, OSHA must show there is a “grave danger” in workplaces, and it needs to justify that emergency rule as a necessary response.

A White House spokesperson did not comment for this story. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has said a pandemic that has killed over 740,000 Americans qualifies as a “grave risk to workers.” The Department of Labor declined to comment.

An average of 1,100 Americans are still dying daily from COVID-19, according to the latest U.S. data, the vast majority of them unvaccinated.

However, critics expect the OSHA rule to be vulnerable to legal attacks.

COVID-19 infections are trending down, some 70% of U.S. adults are fully vaccinated and treatments for the disease have improved, potentially undermining the grave danger claim.

“I think there’s an issue as to whether they can show that in every business, in every industry, every employer that has more than 100 employees, there is a grave danger from COVID,” said Scott Hecker, an employment attorney with Seyfarth Shaw, which represents businesses.

Or, as the National Retail Federation described it in a letter to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, “workers face the danger of COVID-19 wherever they go … because they are human beings going about the world, not because they go to work.”

OSHA has convinced courts to uphold emergency standards in the past with evidence that as few as 80 lives would be saved. It will also be able to argue that masking and other COVID-19 safety measures proved no match for the extremely contagious Delta variant, necessitating the current rules.

“The fact that a person can be exposed to the COVID virus outside of the person’s place of employment does not eliminate OSHA’s authority to regulate,” Sidney Shapiro, a law professor at Wake Forest University, told a Congressional hearing last week.

Republican governors and right-wing talk show hosts have waged a political war against vaccine mandates and mask wearing, hoping to galvanize voters against Democratic President Joe Biden.

Vaccine mandates have been effective at shrinking the ranks of the unvaccinated, although they have also touched off protests, and employers worry they could worsen a national labor shortage.

Mandates on individuals have a long history and have been upheld by courts for more than a century, but they have been imposed by local and states governments, not Washington, which is restrained by the U.S. Constitution.

Critics of the mandate will argue it interferes with traditional states’ roles, namely, regulating healthcare within their boundaries.

OSHA is also fighting history. The agency has issued 10 ETS over its 50 years. Of the six that were challenged in court, only one survived entirely intact.

In the meantime, a huge number of U.S. employers will be left dealing with an uncertain outcome of the legal challenges, even as many focus on achieving compliance.

Mike Bennett, the vice president of human resources for Cianbro, a Maine construction company with 4,000 employees, said he is planning to carry out the OSHA rule.

“Unless something comes from the federal government that says ‘pause until further notice,’ we’ll continue to go down the road that this is coming,” he said.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington and Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, Editing by Chris Sanders, Amy Stevens and Bill Berkrot)

Post Trump, U.S. Democrats offer bill to rein in presidential powers

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. House of Representatives Democrats introduced legislation on Tuesday seeking to pull back powers from the presidency, part of an ongoing effort to rein in the White House in a rebuke to the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump.

House leaders said the “Protecting our Democracy Act” would restore the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches of government that was written into the Constitution.

Among other things, it would put new limits on the use of presidential pardons, prohibit self-pardons and strengthen measures to prevent foreign election interference or illegal campaign activity by White House officials.

The bill also would boost subpoena enforcement, protect inspectors general and watchdogs and strengthen oversight of emergency declarations.

As president, Trump fired a series of inspectors general – watchdogs charged with fighting corruption at federal agencies. To sidestep congressional control over government spending, he declared a national emergency at the border with Mexico to force the transfer of military funds to help build a wall there, a campaign promise.

“We have to codify this… so that no president of whatever party can ever assume that he, or she, has the power to usurp the power of the other branches of government,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a news conference.

Representative Adam Schiff, a lead sponsor, said Democratic President Joe Biden’s White House had been consulted on the bill’s contents. He said he hoped for a House vote this autumn.

The path forward was uncertain. Democrats hold only a slim House majority, and the Republican caucus stands firmly behind Trump, who is expected to run for re-election in 2024 and remains the party’s most influential leader.

Republicans overwhelmingly opposed Trump’s two impeachments – led by many of the Democrats who introduced the legislation – and rejected a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters.

Aides to House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Patricia ZengerleEditing by Bill Berkrot)

U.S. House passes two Democratic-backed gun control bills

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a pair of gun control bills as Democrats seized upon a shifting political landscape that they said improved chances for enacting new laws after years of failed attempts.

The first measure, which passed the Democratic-led House 227-203, would close a long-standing loophole in gun laws by expanding background checks to those purchasing weapons over the internet, at gun shows and through certain private transactions. Only eight Republicans joined the Democrats in backing the bill.

The second bill, passed 219-210 with only two Republicans supporting it, would give authorities 10 business days for federal background checks to be completed before a gun sale can be licensed. Currently, such sales can proceed if the government cannot complete complicated background checks of prospective buyers within three days.

President Joe Biden is a supporter of expanded gun control measures. The legislation may face a tougher battle in the U.S. Senate, where Biden’s fellow Democrats hold an even slimmer majority than in the House.

The bills follow a series of deadly U.S. mass shootings over the past decade. Gun control is a divisive issue in the United States, which enshrines gun rights in its Constitution. Most Republicans strongly oppose gun restrictions, while most Democrats argue that new laws are needed to curb gun violence.

The House Judiciary Committee’s senior Republican, Jim Jordan, wrote on Twitter that House Democrats were “making it harder for law-abiding citizens to buy a gun.”

Many Democrats want to go further by banning sales of some high-capacity, military-style rifles that can fire ammunition rapidly.

Democratic Representative Mike Thompson, who has spearheaded a drive for expanded gun control for years, said 30 people are killed by gun violence daily in the United States, with that number growing to 100 if suicides and accidental deaths involving firearms are counted. At the same time, Thompson said, 170 felons and 50 domestic abusers are stopped from buying a gun every day.

“It only makes sense that if you expand it you’ll stop even more felons, more domestic abusers,” Thompson said.

Republicans opposing the bills argued that the legislation would not make American streets safer and would infringe upon the right to bear arms guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

With Democrats now controlling the White House along with both chambers of Congress, they are seeking to pursue liberal goals thwarted when Republicans led either the House or Senate. Democrats have said their position has been further strengthened by turmoil within the National Rifle Association, the influential gun lobby closely aligned with Republicans.

The Senate’s longstanding filibuster rule makes it so most legislation requires 60 votes to proceed in the 100-seat chamber rather than a simple majority, and Republicans could use the maneuver to try to block gun control measures. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said if that happens, Democrats would “come together as a caucus and we’ll see how we’re going to get this done,” possibly hinting at ending or altering the filibuster rule.

A bipartisan gun control bill in 2013 – proposed after a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school – failed on a vote of 54-46 in the Senate, short of the needed 60 votes.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Will Dunham)

Senators vote to proceed with Trump’s impeachment trial, but conviction may prove elusive

By David Morgan and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A divided U.S. Senate voted largely along party lines on Tuesday to move ahead with Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on a charge of inciting the deadly assault on the Capitol, but conviction appears unlikely barring a major shift among Republicans.

The Senate voted 56-44 to proceed to the first-ever trial of a former president, rejecting his defense lawyers’ argument that Trump was beyond the reach of the Senate after having left the White House on Jan. 20.

Democrats hope to disqualify Trump from ever again holding public office, but Tuesday’s outcome suggested they face long odds. Only six Republican senators joined Democrats to vote in favor of allowing the trial to take place, far short of the 17 needed to secure a conviction.

Convicting Trump would require a two-thirds majority in the 50-50 Senate.

The vote capped a dramatic day in the Senate chamber. Democratic lawmakers serving as prosecutors opened the trial with a graphic video interspersing images of the Jan. 6 Capitol violence with clips of Trump’s incendiary speech to a crowd of supporters moments earlier urging them to “fight like hell” to overturn his Nov. 3 election defeat.

Senators, serving as jurors, watched as screens showed Trump’s followers throwing down barriers and hitting police officers at the Capitol. The video included the moment when police guarding the House of Representatives chamber fatally shot protester Ashli Babbitt, one of five people including a police officer who died in the rampage.

The mob attacked police, sent lawmakers scrambling for safety and interrupted the formal congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory after Trump had spent two months challenging the election results based on claims of widespread voting fraud.

“If that’s not an impeachment offense, then there is no such thing,” Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, who led a team of nine House members prosecuting the case, told the assembled senators after showing the video.

He wept as he recounted how relatives he brought to the Capitol that day to witness the election certification had to shelter in an office near the House floor, saying: “They thought they were going to die.”

In contrast to the Democrats’ emotional presentation, Trump’s lawyers attacked the process, arguing that the proceeding was an unconstitutional, partisan effort to close off Trump’s political future even after he had already departed the White House.

“What they really want to accomplish here in the name of the Constitution is to bar Donald Trump from ever running for political office again, but this is an affront to the Constitution no matter who they target today,” David Schoen, one of Trump’s lawyers, told senators.

He denounced the “insatiable lust for impeachment” among Democrats before airing his own video, which stitched together clips of various Democratic lawmakers calling for Trump’s impeachment going back to 2017.

HOUSE MANAGERS’ CASE ‘COMPELLING, COGENT’

Trump, who was impeached by the Democratic-led House on Jan. 13, is only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached, and the only one to be impeached twice.

His defense argued he was exercising his right to free speech under the Constitution’s First Amendment when he addressed supporters before the Capitol attack.

Bruce Castor, one of Trump’s lawyers, said the storming of the Capitol by hundreds of people “should be denounced in the most vigorous terms,” but argued that “a small group of criminals,” not Trump, were responsible for the violence.

Most legal experts have said it is constitutional to have an impeachment trial after an official has left office.

“Presidents can’t inflame insurrection in their final weeks and then walk away like nothing happened. And yet that is the rule that President Trump asks you to adopt,” Democratic Representative Joe Neguse told the senators.

Most of the senators at the trial were present in the Capitol on Jan. 6, when many lawmakers said they feared for their own safety.

Several Republican senators said they found Trump’s defense, particularly Castor’s argument, disjointed and unclear.

“The House managers made a compelling, cogent case. And the president’s team did not,” said Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to advance the trial.

Cassidy had voted to block the trial on constitutional grounds last month, a Republican effort that failed 55-45. He was the only Republican to switch sides on Tuesday, a move that prompted the Republican Party in his home state, Louisiana, to issue a statement repudiating his decision.

Watching the proceedings on TV at his Florida resort, Trump was unhappy with Castor’s performance, said a person familiar with the situation.

After the Senate adjourned for the day, Castor told reporters: “I thought we had a good day,” and said he did not anticipate making any adjustments to his planned defense in response to the criticism.

The trial could provide clues on the Republican Party’s direction following Trump’s tumultuous four-year presidency. Sharp divisions have emerged between Trump loyalists and those hoping to move the party in a new direction. Democrats for their part are concerned the trial could impede Biden’s ability to swiftly advance an ambitious legislative agenda.

But few Republican senators appear willing to break with Trump.

Senator Josh Hawley, who helped lead the opposition in the Senate to the presidential election results, predicted that Tuesday’s vote would ultimately reflect the chamber’s final decision.

“That’s probably going to be the outcome, right there,” Hawley told reporters.

One year ago, the then-Republican-controlled Senate acquitted Trump on charges of obstructing Congress and abuse of power for pressuring Ukraine to launch an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter in 2019.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Makini Brice, Susan Cornwall, Karen Freifeld and Steve Holland; Writing by Joseph Ax and Alistair Bell; Editing by Scott Malone, Will Dunham and Peter Cooney)

Explainer-What happens when the U.S. Electoral College meets on Monday?

WHAT IS HAPPENING ON MONDAY?

The winner of the U.S. presidential election is determined not by the popular vote but through a system called the Electoral College, which is mandated in the Constitution and allots “electoral votes” to states and the District of Columbia based on their congressional representation.

Before the election, state-level leaders of the two major parties selected people to serve as “electors.”

Technically, Americans are casting votes for those slates of electors, not the candidates themselves.

Those individuals are typically party loyalists who have pledged to support the candidate who got the most votes in their state.

There are 538 electoral votes, meaning 270 are needed to win the election.

Most electors are not household names, but the electors this year include Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, a former candidate for governor in that state.

Electors meet at a time and place selected by their state’s legislature. Nevada is meeting virtually this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Most states will livestream the ceremonies.

Electors will sign certificates showing their votes, which are sent to government officials including Vice President Mike Pence. Those certificates are paired with ones signed by governors showing the popular vote tallies, which have already been certified by all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Electoral votes will be officially tallied by a newly seated Congress on Jan. 6, in a special joint session that Pence will preside over.

At that point, the election is officially decided.

CAN ELECTORS DEFY THE POPULAR VOTE?

Yes, but that is a rare occurrence.

In 2016, seven of the 538 electors cast ballots for someone other than their state’s popular vote winner, an unusually high number.

Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws intended to control rogue electors, or “faithless electors.” Some provide a financial penalty for a rogue vote, while others call for the vote to be canceled and the elector replaced.

COULD CONGRESS REFUSE TO ACCEPT BIDEN’S ELECTORAL VOTES?

It is theoretically possible, but such a move is extremely unlikely to work because Democrats control the House of Representatives.

A U.S. law called the Electoral Count Act allows individual members of the House and Senate to challenge the results during the Jan. 6 special session — a rarely used procedure.

Any objection to a state’s results must be backed by at least one House member and one senator.

The two chambers would then separate to debate the objections before voting on whether to reject the state’s results.

An objection must pass in both chambers by a simple majority.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Peter Cooney)