‘The people prevailed’: Biden addresses nation as electoral college affirms victory – as it happened | US news

Attorney general William Barr will be leaving his post just before Christmas, per Donald Trump.

Cheers erupted in the chamber where California’s electors were meeting, after they formally elected Californian Kamala Harris.

Here’s how Harris’ hometown, the San Francisco Bay Area, celebrated Harris’ victory after she and Joe Biden were projected the election winners:

California – which has more electoral votes than any other state – seals the presidency for Joe Biden. By casting their electoral votes, California’s electors pushed Biden and Kamala Harris’ tally to 302 – well above the 270 needed to win.

After Hawaii casts its electoral votes today, Congress will meet on 6 January in a joint session to formally accept the results.

The electoral college voting today has so far gone as expected. After several electoral college delegates ignored the popular will and cast ballots for a candidate other than the one they’d pledged to support, the US supreme court has made it easier for states to remove rogue or so-called “faithless” electors.

Confused about how the whole system works? Here’s a review:

Here’s the letter from Representative Paul Mitchell, breaking with the Republican party before he retires this year:

As expected, Oregon’s electors awarded the state’s electoral votes to Joe Biden, bringing the electoral vote tallies to 247 for Biden and 232 for Donald Trump.

In the end, Biden will win 306 electoral votes.

California and Hawaii will be awarding their electoral votes this afternoon.

Paul Mitchell, a Republican congressman of Michigan told CNN that he is disgusted with Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to undermine and overturn the election results.

He has reportedly alerted the House clerk that he will be changing his party affiliation from Republican to independent, and has notified Republican leaders that he’s ending his “engagement and association with the Republican party at both the national and state level”.

Mitchell is retiring from Congress, so has less to lose by making this move. Meanwhile, 126 of his Republican colleagues in Congress signed a letter in support of the Texas attorney general’s long-shot attempt to overturn election results in other states.

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• The US coronavirus death toll surpassed 300,000 as the country distributed its first doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Frontline healthcare workers started receiving the vaccine today, and many of them said they were “relieved” to get the treatment after months of treating coronavirus patients. Sandra Lindsay, a critical care nurse in New York, said shortly after receiving the vaccine this morning, “I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history.”
• Members of the electoral college are meeting to formally cast their votes for president. As of now, Joe Biden has won 240 electoral votes, and Donald Trump has received 229 votes. By the end of the day, Biden is expected to have been awarded 306 votes total, bringing him one step closer to his January inauguration.
• Biden will address the electoral college vote count in a speech to the nation tonight. According to excerpts released by his transition team, the president-elect will say, “In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed. … And so, now it is time to turn the page. To unite. To heal.”
• The Wisconsin supreme court again rejected Trump’s bid to overturn Biden’s victory in the state. The conservative-leaning court ruled that the president had waited too long to file his challenge. Conservative justice Brian Hagedorn wrote in the decision, “[T]he [Trump] Campaign is challenging the rulebook adopted before the season began.”
• The US formally blamed Iran for the presumed death of former FBI agent Robert Levinson. The treasury department issued sanctions against two Iranian intelligence officers believed to have been involved in Levinson’s 2007 abduction.

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

In his speech tonight, Joe Biden will seek to put the election firmly to rest by looking ahead to his presidency and the challenges facing the country.

“As I said through this campaign, I will be a president for all Americans. I will work just as hard for those of you who didn’t vote for me, as I will for those who did,” the president-elect is expected to say.

Biden will add, “There is urgent work in front of all of us. Getting the pandemic under control to getting the nation vaccinated against this virus. Delivering immediate economic help so badly needed by so many Americans who are hurting today — and then building our economy back better than ever.”

Biden is scheduled to deliver his speech at 7:30 pm ET tonight, after every state has held its meeting of electors. Hawaii will be the last state to start its meeting, at 7 pm ET. As of now, Biden has already won 240 electoral votes, and he is expected to end up at 306.

Joe Biden’s transition team has released excerpts from his speech tonight, when the president-elect will address the electoral college vote count.

“If anyone didn’t know it before, we know it now. What beats deep in the hearts of the American people is this: democracy,” Biden is expected to say.

“The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know that nothing – not even a pandemic or an abuse of power – can extinguish that flame.”

Echoing his other recent calls for the country to unify, the Democratic president-elect will urge Americans to move on from the election.

“In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed,” Biden will say. “We the people voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact. … And so, now it is time to turn the page. To unite. To heal.”