Today marked the first day of the 117th Congress. My understanding is that the Senate currently sits at 51-48 in favor of the Republicans, because Perdue’s seat is technically vacant pending the outcome of runoff, whereas Loeffler continues to occupy her seat (she was appointed to it and the full term is not yet up). The House currently sits at 222-211 in favor of the Democrats, with a vacancy in Louisiana due to Rep.-elect Letlow’s death last week, and a vacancy in New York due to the unresolved race in the 22nd. Pelosi was re-elected as Speaker despite not having the support of five moderate Democrats.

But, it’s been an eventful weekend in addition to that.

On the litigation front, yesterday the 5th Circuit quickly dismissed Gohmert’s appeal of his lawsuit against Pence regarding the 12th Amendment, agreeing with the lower court’s ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing. The 5th Circuit is generally seen as the most conservative of the appellate courts, and the three-judge panel who tossed the appeal consisted of a Trump appointee and two Reagan appointees.

Also yesterday, we learned that the “arsonist wing” (to borrow Senator Sasse’s term) of the GOP Republican caucus has at least 12 members, including not only Senator Hawley but also another Senator with clear Presidential ambitions, Ted Cruz. Cruz and 10 other Senators (four of whom just joined the Senate today) floated a plan whereby on January 6th Congress would appoint an Electoral Commission to perform an “emergency 10-day audit” of the election results, which would theoretically allow a state time before January 20th to convene its legislature and “certify a change in their vote, if needed” in light of the Commission’s findings. This plan has been roundly criticized as anti-democratic by such Republicans as Senator Romney, Senator Toomey, and Governor Hogan. And, it is doomed to fail since the House will clearly not vote to support the plan.

However, it is nonetheless a very distressing development. Steve Schmidt, the former Republican political operative who announced last month that he would register as a Democrat, argued today that January 6th will represent the first shots in a “political civil war” within the Republican party, with the vote on January 6th representing a “loyalty test,” and with the “autocratic” wing pushing out the remnants of the “pro-democracy” wing in the 2022 Republican primary season. While I haven’t seen any media speculation regarding what I’m about to say, I suspect that if the Democrats were to win both Georgia Senate races next week, the schism within the GOP might come sooner than that: If McConnell no longer has the power of Majority Leader to bind his caucus together, might the likes of Romney, Toomey (who has already announced his retirement in 2022), Sasse (just re-elected in 2020), and Collins (ditto) decide to leave the GOP caucus and sit as independents, or perhaps even take steps towards formation of a new conservative party?

And then we have today’s big news, where the Washington Post released an hour-long audio recording of a call that took place yesterday between Trump and Georgia’s beleaguered Republican Secretary of State Raffensperger, plus attorneys and other advisers on both ends. The call consists largely of Trump asserting that he really won Georgia by hundreds of thousands of votes, and imploring Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to change the result. Raffensperger wasn’t having any of it.

In the hours since the call was released, there has been speculation that in the call Trump may have violated Georgia and/or federal laws regarding solicitation of election fraud. But even notwithstanding that potentiality: to the extent the call provides a window into Trump’s beliefs and his current state of mind, it’s frightening stuff. He seems to genuinely believe the election was stolen from him, based on conspiracy theories and arithmetic not grounded in actual facts. If his term weren’t coming to a natural end in 17 days, I suspect we’d need to talk once more about impeachment and/or the 25th Amendment.

Oh, and there’s reporting today that this week Trump intends to give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Republican Congressmen Nunes and Jordan. I have no words.