Washington is gearing up for a busy week between …

Desde Washington DC January is never a quiet month in American politics, but this year begins with more intensity. During the first week of 2021, the city of Washington will be the center of protests by supporters of President Donald Trump, who demand that Congress not certify the victory of his rival Joseph Biden in the elections last November. The country’s capital is also taking a close look at the state of South Georgia, where the fate of the Senate will be decided.

While The United States is approaching 350,000 deaths from covid-19, Trump has focused his efforts on the problem that seems most important to him for two months: the unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud. “A massive amount of evidence will be presented on the 6th,” the president promised through a Twitter post in which he quoted a tweet from a Missouri senator who would oppose the results in Congress.

On January 6, the House of Representatives and the Senate will meet in session chaired by the Vice-President, Mike pence, to count the votes of the electoral college issued in mid-December. For Wednesday, part of the Republican Party has prepared the last possible action to prevent Biden from ascending to the presidency: ignore the outcome.

Despite the seemingly inevitable outcome, supporters of the tycoon are planning a massive protest in the U.S. capital on the very day of the congressional meeting. “Stop theft” is their slogan, convinced that there has been fraud. Trump himself is encouraging them via Twitter to come to Washington to join the march.

The joint session is usually only a formality, as the votes are certified by the states. In the event that there is any doubt about who won in a state, Congress can vote to define it. That’s what a dozen Republican representatives and a similar number of senators are aiming for.

If they ultimately do, each chamber will vote to accept or reject the outcome of each contested state. It will be a long day in the District of Columbia if that happens. For the strategy to work, the House of Representatives and the Senate would have to vote in favor of ignoring the results. This is very difficult to achieve because the lower house is in Democrats’ hands and it is not clear that Trump supporters have the support of all Republicans in the Senate.

The mogul’s relationship with his party worsened last week when the Republican-majority upper house insisted on passing a defense spending law that Trump had vetoed. This is the first time he has done so during the entire term, which will end in less than 20 days. “Our Republican Senate narrowly missed an opportunity to get rid of Section 230, which gives unlimited power to big tech companies. Pathetic! Trump complained.

Thinking about Georgia

Another target of the president within his own party is the governor of Georgia, whom he accuses of failing to properly check the November votes. It wasn’t just because the southern state is a Republican stronghold that it turned to the Democrats in 2020 in the presidential elections. The fate of the Senate is now in the hands of the Georgian people, with two second-round elections which will decide on January 5 whether it continues to be controlled by the Republicans or whether the two parties will be in a situation of parity. For Biden’s presidency, having an upper house supportive of any reform he is considering will be essential.

Trump will visit Georgia on Monday. The same will be true for Biden, who will be in Atlanta, an area that was crucial to his triumph last November. “We have less than a week to do everything in our power to help Jon Ossof and Raphael Warnock win the second round of the elections in Georgia. These elections will determine not only the fate of the Senate but the future of our country ”, declared the president-elect. Kamala Harris, the future vice president, will be in the city of Savannah this Sunday to motivate the vote in the final days of the campaign. For now, early votes seem to favor the Democratic Party, but there, they know that it is not an easy state to gain.

As they follow the development of the elections in Georgia, Biden and Harris have highlighted the number of coronaviruses in the country. The United States began 2021 by racking up more than 20 million cases of contagion and approaching 350,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic. So far, some 2.7 million Americans have received the first dose of the vaccine, well below the 20 million the Trump administration had promised as a target to be achieved by the end of last year.

“Some states take a long time to vaccinate recipients despite the successful and large-scale distribution of vaccines by the federal government,” Trump said Friday. As in the early months of the pandemic, when the supply of chinstrap and other protective gear was in the hands of governors, vaccine distribution was left to each state.

Biden, on the contrary, plans to centralize actions and He has already appointed a team that will be in charge of supply chain management, the vaccination campaign and testing from January 20. The pandemic will color his tenure from the start and for his limited inauguration ceremony, he is already planning a tribute to the victims of the disease. He knows that the response to covid-19 will be the main challenge he will face as soon as he arrives at the White House. “The next few weeks and months will be very difficult, a very difficult time for our nation. Perhaps the most difficult of the entire pandemic, ”the president-elect recently said.