Kamala Harris’ Long Day
Today, Kamala Harris has to certify the results of the vote she lost: It’s January 6, time to certify the election results (no shamans needed). The person who presides over this process is the vice president, which means that Harris is in one of the most awkward positions possible. Whatever kind of day you have, Harris is having a worse one!
Al Gore had to do this back in 2001, and Richard Nixon in 1961, so it’s not the first time in American history that a veep has been forced to carry out the office’s constitutional duties in this way.
“This is the first time in 100 years that a candidate for the presidency announced the result of an election in which he was defeated and announced the victory of his opponent,” said Nixon at the time, saying that he did not think “we could have a more striking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system.” (The previous vice president to find himself in that position? John Breckinridge, two months before the Civil War.)
“In our campaigns, no matter how hard they may be, no matter how close the election may turn out to be, those who lose accept the verdict and support those who win,” said Nixon. Kumbaya. Let’s hope Harris can channel some of this energy today.
Following the chaos four years ago, the government adopted new rules in 2022 making it more difficult to object to a state’s certification. Though members of Congress may still choose to object, their statement “needs to be in writing and signed by one-fifth of the members of the House (the lower chamber) and one-fifth of the Senate (the upper chamber),” per the BBC. The election results have not been widely contested this time, and today’s proceedings are likely to be drama-free.
So it begins: Honduras’ president (and premiere charter city antagonist) Xiomara Castro has threatened to expel the U.S. military from the country if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his deportation scheme. “Faced with a hostile attitude of mass expulsion of our brothers, we would have to consider a change in our policies of cooperation with the United States, especially in the military arena,” said Castro on Wednesday. “Without paying a cent for decades, they maintain military bases in our territory, which in this case would lose all reason to exist in Honduras,” continued Castro.
I suppose if you exclude the $190 million in foreign aid doled out to Honduras each year, Washington doesn’t pay “a cent.” And if you ignore all the trade between the Honduras and the U.S.—its top trading partner and largest destination for exports—then I suppose there’s no reason to maintain the relationship. There is also something strange about opposing your own citizens coming home, even under such coercive circumstances.
Pew estimates that, in 2022, about half a million Hondurans were living as undocumented immigrants in the U.S.; that’s about 5 percent of the
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