Instead, most lawmakers will take an oath without the company of a single guest to reduce exposure to the coronavirus, and have been instructed to remain in their offices, except during voting. The Capitol doctor warned strongly against “meetings of any kind”.
Even Pelosi’s election – for what could be his final turn with the hammer – will not have the usual theatricality of a vote to confirm the next speaker. The vote itself should take three to four hours, while lawmakers scan the chamber in small groups to minimize the risks to the virus.
“As we all swore today, we accept a responsibility as frightening and demanding as any that previous generations of leadership faced,” wrote Pelosi in a letter to his members before the inauguration ceremony on Sunday.
Pelosi will face his tighter margins, after Republicans won more than a dozen seats in November. The biggest threat to her hammer, however, will come from possible Democratic absences, as lawmakers cannot vote by proxy for president.
Pelosi told his caucus on a private call last week that his “opponent is Covid”. But math didn’t seem to be so worrying on Sunday morning, with Democrats anticipating only one absence on their side – Rep. Alcee Hastings, who is battling pancreatic cancer. Republicans were predicting two absences – elected deputies David Valadao and Maria Elvira Salazar, who recently tested positive for coronavirus. Another vacancy will remain open: the 22nd district of New York, where the dispute has not yet been called between Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi and Republican contender Claudia Tenney.
“I am confident that the election of the mayor today will show a united democratic bench, ready to face future challenges, and that we are prepared to put our country on a new course,” wrote Pelosi in the note to his members.
The vote will once again mark Pelosi in the record books, as the first woman to hold office and the first person in six decades to recover the spokesman’s hammer – now twice – after losing it.
Senate control, however, remains uncertain, with two runoff runs in Georgia scheduled for Tuesday that will determine whether Mitch McConnell or Chuck Schumer will be the majority leader.
Sunday’s proceedings will kick off a busy week in Congress, which will include a chaotic but doomed effort by Republicans to dethrone Joe Biden as president-elect.
Several members of the Republican Party, led by Alabama deputy Mo Brooks in the House and Senator Ted Cruz in the Senate, vowed to challenge these results in Trump’s last breath by nullifying Biden’s victory. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) Was the first senator to join the Republican Party’s efforts to run for election. Trump and his supporters claimed – without evidence – that Biden won only because of “electoral fraud”, but the legal disputes by Trump and his allies largely failed.
This move will take place on Wednesday, January 6, when the House and Senate will meet for a joint session to formally count the votes of the Electoral College. Vice President Mike Pence will be placed in the difficult position of leading the joint session. That process, which could take just half an hour, is now expected to drag on late Wednesday night or possibly into the early hours of Thursday, especially after nearly a dozen Republican senators signed the initiative on Saturday.
Each of the opening week’s proceedings – from the first quorum call to the Electoral College vote – will represent a logistical nightmare for Capitol officials tasked with keeping members safe during the still violent coronavirus outbreak.
Unlike much of 2020, when many House legislators were able to vote by proxy and limit their travel to DC, the start of the 117th Congress will require each member to vote in person until the new package of rules is adopted.
This means that hundreds of members will travel to Washington after spending time with their family on vacation – probably without quarantining DC first.
The freshman class will take the group oath in the plenary, preserving at least part of the House’s biannual tradition. But, in a radical change from previous sessions, each newly elected member will have only one guest in the Chamber gallery on Sunday. (Returning members are not allowed as guests).
Congressional leaders have stepped up their response to coronavirus on Capitol Hill in recent weeks, including an internal testing site that delivers results within 24 hours. Still, many lawmakers and advisers are deeply concerned about the coronavirus spreading across the sprawling Capitol complex.
More than 50 members and elected members have tested positive in the past few months, including several who have been hospitalized. Last Tuesday, lawmakers mourned the death of their future colleague, the elected representative of the Republican Party Luke Letlow, from Louisiana, who died of Covid-19 at 41 and was only a few days old away from your oath.
In all, the 117th Congress will include more than 60 new members of the House, including the 14 Republicans who have reversed seats and helped to dilute the now fragile majority of Democrats.
The GOP freshman class includes a record number of women – a much needed boost after the conference had only 13 female members in the last semester – as well as a mix of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Several freshmen are actually recurring members: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) And Pete Sessions (R-Texas), as well as Valadao.
A Republican freshman, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, will take a “provisional” seat after being certified as a race winner by a margin of just six votes. Her Democratic competitor, Rita Hart, has filed a lawsuit in the House seeking a closer examination of the dispute, specifically, the nearly two dozen ballots she claims have been wrongly excluded from counting.