Mike Check
Plus: A ruling on voting equipment in Pennsylvania. 🗳️
This Week in Democracy
- Mike Johnson survived a close vote and held on to his job as House speaker. Today is the opening day of the 119th Congress, which includes some members who are making history.
➡️ EXPLORE: Election Denial in Congress
- The new Congress will gather for a joint session next Monday to count the electoral votes and certify Donald Trump’s presidential victory. The day will mark four years since the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, when the peaceful transfer of power was interrupted.
- Strict security protections will be in place for the electoral count, former President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral on Jan. 9, and Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. Law enforcement leaders reassured the public about those protections after the terror attack in New Orleans.
- The bipartisan leaders of the House committee that investigated the 2021 Capitol attack, Rep. Bennie Thompson and former Rep. Liz Cheney, were awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal, one of the country’s highest civilian honors.
Image: Speaker Mike Johnson. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
State of the States
In Pennsylvania, a court sided with the Commonwealth in a dispute over one county’s handling of its voting machines. In 2021, two Fulton County commissioners allowed an outside vendor to examine the county’s voting machines, part of a fruitless attempt to find fraud in the 2020 election. The state’s top election official later decertified the machines, citing security concerns, and notified the county that the outside inspection had broken state law. The Commonwealth Court ruled this week that the Commonwealth has the power to prohibit counties from allowing unauthorized outside access to voting equipment.