Chaos, violence, mockery as pro-Trump mob occupies Congress

WASHINGTON (AP) — “Where are they?” a Trump supporter demanded in a crowd of dozens roaming the halls of the Capitol, bearing Trump flags and pounding on doors.

They — lawmakers, staff members and more — were hiding under tables, hunkered in lockdowns, saying prayers, and seeing the fruits of the country’s divisions up close and violent.

Guns were drawn. A woman was shot and killed. A Trump flag hung on the Capitol. The graceful Rotunda reeked of tear gas. Glass shattered.

On Wednesday, hallowed spaces of American democracy, one after another, yielded to the occupation of Congress.

The pro-Trump mob took over the presiding officer’s chair in the Senate, the offices of the House speaker, and the Senate dais, where one yelled, “Trump won that election.”

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The Latest: Some GOP senators no longer plan Biden objection

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Congress’ tally of the Electoral College vote won by Joe Biden (all times local):

8:55 p.m.

Multiple Republican senators have reversed course and now say they won’t object to congressional certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Their change of heart came after a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol earlier Wednesday and interrupted their proceedings. One person was fatally shot.

Sens. Steve Daines of Montana, Mike Braun of Indiana and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia all said in light of the violence they would stand down from planned objections to Biden’s win.

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Pro-Trump mob storms US Capitol in bid to overturn election

WASHINGTON (AP) — A violent mob loyal to President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday and forced lawmakers into hiding, in a stunning attempt to overturn America’s presidential election, undercut the nation’s democracy and keep Democrat Joe Biden from replacing Trump in the White House.

The nation’s elected representatives scrambled to crouch under desks and donned gas marks, while police futilely tried to barricade the building, one of the most jarring scenes ever to unfold in a seat of American political power. A woman was shot and killed inside the Capitol, and Washington’s mayor instituted an evening curfew in an attempt to contain the violence.

The rioters were egged on by Trump, who has spent weeks falsely attacking the integrity of the election and had urged his supporters to descend on Washington to protest Congress’ formal approval of Biden’s victory. Some Republican lawmakers were in the midst of raising objections to the results on his behalf when the proceedings were abruptly halted by the mob.

Together, the protests and the GOP election objections amounted to an almost unthinkable challenge to American democracy and exposed the depths of the divisions that have coursed through the country during Trump’s four years in office. Though the efforts to block Biden from being sworn in on Jan. 20 were sure to fail, the support Trump has received for his efforts to overturn the election results have badly strained the nation’s democratic guardrails.

Congress reconvened hours later, vowing to finish confirming the Electoral College vote for Biden’s election, even if it took all night.

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Warnock, Ossoff win in Georgia, handing Dems Senate control

ATLANTA (AP) — Democrats won both Georgia Senate seats — and with them, the U.S. Senate majority — as final votes were counted Wednesday, serving President Donald Trump a stunning defeat in his turbulent final days in office while dramatically improving the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s progressive agenda.

Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Democratic challengers who represented the diversity of their party’s evolving coalition, defeated Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler two months after Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992.

Warnock, who served as pastor for the same Atlanta church where civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, becomes the first African American from Georgia elected to the Senate. And Ossoff becomes the state’s first Jewish senator and, at 33 years old, the Senate’s youngest member.

This week’s elections were expected to mark the formal finale to the tempestuous 2020 election season, although the Democrats' resounding success was overshadowed by chaos and violence in Washington, where angry Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying Biden's victory.

Wednesday's unprecedented siege drew fierce criticism of Trump's leadership from within his own party, and combined with the bad day in Georgia, marked one of the darkest days of his divisive presidency.

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Biden urges restoring decency after 'assault' on democracy

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden called Wednesday for the restoration of “simple decency” as a mob incited by his predecessor stormed the U.S. Capitol and delayed Congress from certifying the results of November's election.

Biden had planned to deliver a speech focused on how to revive the economy and provide financial relief for small-business owners reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, giving routine political remarks from a theatre in his native Delaware. But shortly before he was to begin speaking, demonstrators broke into the Capitol building, reaching as far as the Senate floor.

“Our democracy is under unprecedented assault unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times,” Biden said adding that the violent and chaotic events were “an assault on the rule of law.”

The Capitol building was locked down and police moved in with guns drawn as Vice-President Mike Pence and lawmakers were evacuated to secure locations. National Guard troops were deployed and a citywide curfew called for shortly after dusk, as rioters continued to occupy the seat of Congress for hours.

“I call on this mob to pull back and allow democracy to go forward,” said the president-elect.

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A moment in America, unimaginable but perhaps inevitable

To see it unspool — to watch the jumbled images ricochet, live, across the world's endless screens — was, as an American, a struggle to believe your eyes. But there it was, in the capital city of the United States in early January 2021, a real-time breaking and entering the likes of which the republic has never seen.

The U.S. Capitol was overrun by violent supporters of Donald Trump, who exhorted them to march on the domed building as lawmakers inside carried out their constitutional duty by certifying his electoral defeat. The proceedings were quickly abandoned as the mob smashed windows, marched through hallways and rummaged through lawmakers’ desks.

Fourteen days before Joe Biden is set to be inaugurated on this very site, elected officials sheltered in place in their own building. Agents barricaded themselves inside congressional chambers, guns drawn. The stars and stripes — soaring over public property — was lowered, then replaced as a blue Trump flag ascended.

In one of the day's most indelible images, a hoodie-clad trespasser sat in a chair overlooking the Senate floor — minutes after it had been vacated by Trump's own vice-president, Mike Pence — waving his fist in front of a thick, ornate curtain designed to summon the trappings of democracy.

This was not “the peaceful transfer of power” so lionized by the American tradition. Not even remotely. “This,” Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said, "is an absolute disgrace."

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AP FACT CHECK: Trump's false claims, fuel on a day of chaos

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump pressed his hopeless case for overturning the election to a crowd of supporters Wednesday, fueling the grievances of a mob that then stormed the Capitol and disrupted the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Drawing on baseless conspiracies, Trump unleashed a torrent of misinformation to supporters already convinced that his defeat was unfair, unswayed by the sweeping verdict of election officials, judges and justices and Trump’s own officials in the departments of Justice and Homeland Security that the Nov. 3 election was cleanly run and fairly counted.

Pro-Trump protesters then marched to the Capitol and some bulled their way inside, making for a scene of violent clashes with law enforcement and lawmakers huddling in lockdown.

Trump has been telling wildly false tales about the election outcome for two months in a flailing effort to upend Biden’s win. Trump didn’t pull back now, in a moment of reckoning that is sure to seal his defeat despite the chaos and moves by some of his allies in Congress to drag out the certification of the Electoral College results.

He also floated baseless theories about the two Senate elections Tuesday in Georgia, where Democrats picked up both seats and seized back control of the chamber.

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Governors scramble to speed vaccine effort after slow start

New York’s governor threatened to fine hospitals if they don't use their allotment of COVID-19 vaccine fast enough. His South Carolina counterpart warned health care workers they have until Jan. 15 to get a shot or move to the back of the line. California’s governor wants to use dentists to vaccinate people.

With frustration rising over the sluggish rollout of the vaccine, state leaders and other politicians around the U.S. are turning up the pressure, improvising and seeking to bend the rules to get shots in arms more quickly.

Meanwhile, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Wednesday that the government will allow more drugstores to start giving vaccinations to speed up the process. If health workers aren’t lining up fast enough, he said, it is OK to expand eligibility to lower-priority groups.

“We need to not be overly prescriptive in that, especially as we see governors who are leaving vaccines sitting in freezers rather than getting it out into people’s arms,” he said.

As of Wednesday, more than three weeks into the U.S. vaccination campaign, 5.3 million people had gotten their first shot out of the 17 million doses distributed so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While that is believed to an undercount because of a lag in reporting, health officials are still well behind where they wanted to be.

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EU commission greenlights Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine

AMSTERDAM (AP) — The European Union’s executive commission gave the green light Wednesday to Moderna Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine, providing the 27-nation bloc with a second vaccine to use in the desperate battle to tame the virus rampaging across the continent.

The European Commission granted conditional marketing authorization for the vaccine. The decision came against a backdrop of high infection rates in many EU countries and strong criticism of the slow pace of vaccinations across the region of some 450 million people.

“We are providing more COVID-19 vaccines for Europeans. With the Moderna vaccine, the second one now authorized in the EU, we will have a further 160 million doses. And more vaccines will come," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.

The EMA recommended the conditional authorization following a meeting earlier Wednesday.

“This vaccine provides us with another tool to overcome the current emergency,” said EMA Executive Director Emer Cooke. “It is a testament to the efforts and commitment of all involved that we have this second positive vaccine recommendation just short of a year since the pandemic was declared by WHO.”

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Ossoff seals Democrats' sweep; will be youngest US senator

ATLANTA (AP) — As a teenager, Jon Ossoff was inspired by the pivotal role John Lewis played in the fight for racial equality when the civil rights icon was in his early 20s.

He was in awe of Lewis' life, he told The Associated Press in December, particularly how someone “so young” had achieved such a prominent position as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

At 33, the millennial Democrat will assume his own leadership mantle after being one of two candidates to help the party sweep Georgia's crucial U.S. Senate runoff elections, a victory that sealed Democrats' control of the chamber. Ossoff defeated Republican David Perdue in the runoff that was held Tuesday after neither he nor Perdue received 50% of the vote in November.

This is Ossoff's first election to public office, and he will be the youngest member of the Senate. But he has never let youth and inexperience be barriers to his aspirations.

In 2017, at the age of 29, he ran for Congress in Georgia in a race closely watched as an early referendum on President Donald Trump.

News from © The Associated Press, 2021