December 16 political news briefs

Here are today’s political news briefs.

News reports said Congressional leaders are nearing a deal on a new coronavirus relief package that is worth about $900 billion and includes a second round of direct payments to Americans, but the checks will be $600 dollars, unlike the $1,200 payments from March. There are still negotiations on Capitol Hill and with the White House. Axios said this is the closest Congress has been to reaching a stimulus deal in months. So we’ll see what happens.

The Biden inauguration committee announced that the inauguration ceremony on January 20, 2021, which is when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be sworn in, will have a limited attendance because of the coronavirus. The committee said the audience will look like the State of the Union’s size. Tickets will be limited to members of Congress and one guest each, so that’s about 1,000 people in total. The ceremony will be televised and streamed online.

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In Georgia, early voting began this week for runoff elections to decide both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats. Axios said there is a huge turnout already with 480,000 ballots already cast. 65% of the ballots were sent by mail. Biden will visit Georgia this week to drum up support for the Democratic candidates, and President Trump recently visited Georgia. The Georgia race will decide who gets the majority in the U.S. senate in 2021. Republican Senators Perdue and Loeffler are going up against Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. The election is on January 5.

Today there was a Senate hearing in which Christopher Krebs, the former U.S. cybersecurity official, testified. Krebs was fired after he said the 2020 election was secure and had no interference. He said today that while elections are sometimes messy, he has no doubt that this election was secure. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) said he felt there was fraud and that the election was in many ways stolen and that laws needed to be strengthened in the future to fix it. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich) criticized Republican senators for holding the hearing because courts and the Electoral College have affirmed Joe Biden’s victory and said the hearing was feeding into conspiracy theories and lies. President Trump continued to tweet several times today about election fraud.

That’s all the political news briefs for today.

https://www.axios.com/stimulus-deal-direct-payments-congress-e920a2a5-c544-49f4-b470-0d8864701e93.html

https://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article247891375.html

https://www.axios.com/georgia-senate-runoff-turnout-db6ed79e-1185-46b0-ac2f-36f8d9a4ae42.html

https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/530532-krebs-doubles-down-on-asserting-the-security-of-the-election-as-senators