The family of George Herbert Walker Bush celebrated the life of the 41st U.S. president at a funeral service in his home church Thursday in Houston, Texas, before transporting his remains on a train to his final resting spot.

Bush’s friend of 60 years, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, told 1,200 mourners at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church that Bush “had the courage of a warrior, but the greater courage of a peacemaker.”

Baker said Bush, in office in 1991 at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall separating democratic West Germany from communist East Germany, understood that humility toward a fallen adversary “is the very best path.”

Thursday’s service in Bush’s adopted Texas home in the southwestern United States followed the larger state funeral Wednesday in Washington that was attended by President Donald Trump and four living former U.S. presidents, including Bush’s son, George W. Bush, the 43rd president who delivered an emotional eulogy to his father.  Current and former world leaders and other American dignitaries were among the 3,000 mourners in the cavernous Washington National Cathedral.

The flag-draped casket of the elder Bush lay in repose overnight ahead of the service at the Houston church so mourners could file past it.

After the service, the former president’s casket was taken by a specially-designed train 120 kilometers north to the city of College Station for burial at his presidential library on the grounds of Texas A&M University.  He is being laid to rest alongside his wife of 73 years, Barbara, who died earlier this year, and their daughter Robin who succumbed to leukemia in childhood.  

At the Wednesday state funeral, the younger President Bush said of his father, “He taught us public service was noble and necessary.  He had an enormous capacity to give of himself.”

President Donald Trump had no speaking role during the Episcopalian service, a break from recent tradition and in accordance with George H.W. Bush’s wishes.

Trump had tweeted before the service:

The current president, who has had a contentious public feud with the Bush family, earlier had declared Wednesday a national day of mourning, closing federal agencies, suspending regular mail delivery and closing stock markets.

Trump, the day before, spent 20 minutes visiting Bush family members, who were staying at Blair House, across the street from the White House. Blair House is also known as the President’s Guest House.

Trump, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, shook hands inside the cathedral with his immediate two-term predecessor, Barack Obama, and wife Michelle, but the tension between the Trumps and Obama was palpable in the pews, epitomizing the nation’s political divide.

WATCH: US Bids Farewell to President George HW Bush

Also, in the front row was Democrat Bill Clinton, who defeated the elder incumbent Bush in 1992 to become president, and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in the 2016 election. Sitting next to the Clintons was fellow Democrat Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn.

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton eventually became close friends and traveled together internationally.

Another close friend of the elder Bush, former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson, recalled that the 41st president was “a class act from birth to death … one of nature’s noble men.”

Bush was hailed by presidential historian Jon Meacham as “America’s last great soldier-statesman,” who “made our lives and the lives of nations freer, better, nobler and warmer.”

Among the foreign dignitaries inside the cathedral were Britain’s Prince Charles, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Queen Rania, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Polish President Andrzej Duda and former presidents of Estonia, Mexico and Portugal, as well as former prime ministers of Britain, Canada, Japan and Kuwait.

Bells tolled 41 times as Bush’s casket entered the cathedral after being transported in a family motorcade from the U.S. Capitol and past the White House for the first state funeral for a president in a dozen years.

Around the clock in the Rotunda over two days, thousands — many who had lined up in near-freezing temperatures for hours to enter the Capitol — paid their final respects to Bush, whose flag-draped coffin rested on the wooden catafalque built in 1865 for the casket of assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

The four entrances to the Rotunda were draped in black as Bush’s body lay in state, an honor bestowed to only 31 others in the history of the United States (Lincoln being the first president).

One of those who entered the Rotunda Tuesday was former Senator Bob Dole, a rival to Bush in the 1988 Republican presidential primary. Dole, who is 95, was helped from his wheelchair to stand and salute his fellow World War II veteran.

Bush was born into privilege and politics (his father a U.S. senator and grandfather a top industrialist). He served in Congress, as ambassador to the United Nations, chaired the Republican National Committee, was an envoy to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and vice president before being elected president in 1988.
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A key Democratic senator is warning the Trump administration not to lift sanctions against a Russian oligarch or the companies he controls.

Oleg Deripaska holds large stakes in the Russian aluminum giant Rusal and the automobile conglomerate GAZ Group.

New Jersey’s Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a letter to the Treasury Department that it would face strong opposition in Congress if it waives sanctions against Deripaska and the companies.

“How the Treasury Department manages this delisting exercise will shape our perceptions about the administration’s seriousness in implementing the Russian sanctions regime,” Menendez wrote.

There has been no comment from Treasury.

The administration slapped sanctions on Deripaska in April for what it called Russian “malign activity” — including election meddling — and crimes by Deripaska himself. Those include allegations of bribery, extortion, links to organized crime and murder.

Deripaska has denied the charges.

The sanctions were supposed to have taken hold immediately. But after an appeal from Rusal, Treasury gave it an October deadline to cut ties to Deripaska. That deadline has been extended three times. 
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Feverish media speculation had raged ahead of Robert Mueller’s sentencing recommendations for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, fueled by hopes the court filing would provide fresh insight into the special counsel’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

What emerged instead from the heavily redacted document was a deepening mystery and a few hints that the nearly 18-month-old probe is headed in unknown and previously unexpected directions.

In the sentencing memo filed in federal court late Tuesday, Mueller’s prosecutors recommended that Flynn, an early cooperating witness in the sweeping Russia probe, receive no prison time for lying to the FBI because he has provided “substantial assistance” to several ongoing investigations since pleading guilty last December.

Flynn sat for 19 interviews with lawyers from the special counsel’s office, as well as the Justice Department, providing “firsthand information” on interactions between President Donald Trump’s transition team and Russian government officials in December 2016, prosecutors wrote.

They also praised the “timeliness” of Flynn’s cooperation, saying it had persuaded other witnesses to cooperate.

But prosecutors disclosed little else, blacking out large portions of the memo due to “sensitive information about ongoing investigations.”

“While this addendum seeks to provide a comprehensive description of the benefit the government has thus far obtained from the defendant’s substantial assistance, some of that benefit may not be fully realized at this time because the investigation in which he has provided assistance is ongoing,” the memo said.

That left analysts reading tea leaves (trying to predict the future) as they sought to unravel a riddle shrouded in mystery: two separate investigations unrelated to the Russia probe with which Flynn has cooperated.

“I don’t believe we’ve learned anything” from the sentencing memo, said Hans von Spakovsky, a legal expert at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based conservative think tank.

Flynn, a former Army general and head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, served as Trump’s national security adviser for less than a month. He was forced to resign after news surfaced that he had lied to administration officials about his talks with Sergey Kislyak, former Russian ambassador to Washington, during the presidential transition.

Flynn had drawn investigators’ scrutiny before he ran afoul of the FBI in January 2017. While serving as an adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016, he lobbied for a Dutch company linked to the Turkish government without registering as a foreign agent.

Flynn began cooperating with the special counsel after pleading guilty to lying to federal agents about his conversations with Kislyak. He became the first of five former Trump associates who have entered guilty pleas with the special counsel’s office.

The sentencing recommendation by Mueller, if approved by a federal judge later this month, could spell an end to Flynn’s legal troubles. Sentencing is set for Dec. 18.

But as part of his agreement with the special counsel, Flynn is required to testify “at any and all trials” where his testimony is deemed relevant.

Von Spakovsky said that while the Mueller investigation remains cloaked in secrecy, it is unlikely to wrap up by year’s end and could well drag on as late as next spring. He said he expects the special counsel to write a report on his findings at some point next year without issuing any major indictments.

Trump recently provided the special counsel with written answers about his knowledge of the Russian interference, raising speculation that Mueller’s team may have received what they need to complete their report.

But recent developments in the probe paint a different picture.

Last week, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a Trump Tower project in Moscow, and prosecutors revealed that Cohen had spent 70 hours in interviews with investigators.

On Friday, Mueller’s prosecutors are expected to disclose how former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort “repeatedly lied” to them in recent weeks in breach of a cooperation agreement.

“So all of that tells me that this is very complicated, that there is more to come,” said Chris Edelson, an assistant professor of government at American University School of Public Affairs. “I would not expect Mueller’s investigation or the other investigations that are referred to in the Flynn sentencing memo to end anytime soon. Hopefully, we’ll get more information, but I don’t see things wrapping up.”

 
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“I’m not going to put the country out of business trying to maintain certain standards that probably don’t matter,” President Donald Trump told VOA when asked about the economic impacts of climate change.

When not denying its existence, the Trump administration’s approach to

climate change essentially comes down to three arguments: the United States has already cut its greenhouse gas emissions more than other countries, regardless of any international agreement; regulations to cut emissions come with high costs and few benefits; and those regulations would put the United States at a disadvantage because other countries will not follow.

“When you look at China, and when you look at other countries where they have foul air,” Trump added, “we’re going to be clean, but they’re not, and it costs a lot of money.”

As U.N. climate negotiations get under way in Poland to work out rules for implementing the Paris climate agreement — from which Trump intends to withdraw the United States — experts weigh in on the administration’s claims.

Emissions cuts

It’s true that the United States has reduced its greenhouse gas production more than any other country. U.S. emissions peaked in 2005. In the last decade, they have fallen by about 13 percent, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

But the United States was the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases until 2006. And, others have made bigger cuts by percentage. Hungary’s levels, for example, decreased 14 percent.

U.S. emissions started to fall when the fracking boom took off.

The new technique of hydraulic fracturing turned the United States into a major natural gas producer. As the price of natural gas has dropped, it has been steadily replacing coal as the dominant fuel for electricity generation. Because burning natural gas produces far less carbon dioxide than coal, greenhouse gas emissions have decreased.

More recently, renewable sources such as solar and wind power have started to make inroads on the power grid.

While U.S. emissions have fallen since the 2000s, China’s have soared.

The country pursued astonishing economic growth with an enormous investment in coal-fired power plants. China is now the leading producer of greenhouse gases by far, roughly doubling U.S. output.

Cost-benefit

Trump has argued that regulations aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions would hobble the U.S. economy. He has moved to undo the Obama administration’s proposed rules on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and efficiency standards for vehicles and appliances, among others.

Critics question whether those regulations would cost as much Trump suggests.

“None of these policies were going to have dramatic increases in the prices that consumers would see,” Duke University public policy professor Billy Pizer said. He added that normal price swings would likely swamp the cost of the regulations Trump targets.

The emissions reductions the Obama administration pledged in Paris “were built largely on a continuation of the coal-to-gas transition and a continuation of growth in renewable energy that’s already happening,” said Alex Trembath of the Breakthrough Institute research center. As such, he added, they “don’t imply a large cost. In fact, they imply a marginal increased benefit to the U.S.”

Those benefits come, for example, because burning less coal produces less air pollution, which lowers health costs.

Not to mention the direct results of climate change: wildfires, floods, droughts and so on.

“We have enough science and enough economics to show that there are damages resulting from us releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. We know that that is not a free thing,” University of Chicago public policy professor Amir Jina said. “And yet, we are artificially setting it as free because we’re not paying the price of that externality.”

He said economists nearly unanimously support a carbon tax, a cap-and-trade program or some other way to put a price on carbon emissions.

Collective action

Few nations have taken the necessary steps to meet the emissions reduction pledges they made in Paris, according to the most recent United Nations emissions gap report.

Even those pledges would fall far short of the Paris goal of limiting global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, the report adds. Reaching that target will take “unprecedented and urgent action.” A 2016 report said an additional $5.2 trillion investment in renewable energy will be necessary worldwide over the next 25 years.

Trump’s statement — “we’re going to be clean, but they’re not, and it costs a lot of money” — sums up why nations are reluctant to act: no one wants to take on burdens that they think others won’t.

“It’s the thing which has been dogging action on climate change for generations,” Jina said.

“We only really solve the problem if everybody acts together,” he added. “And if enough people are not acting, then we don’t.”

Paris depends on countries following through on increasingly ambitious emissions cuts.

Each country decides what it is willing to do. Every five years, countries come together and show their progress.

“You over time build confidence in each other,” Pizer said. “Ideally, you ratchet up the commitments as you see your actions reciprocated by other countries.”

Trump’s backpedaling on the U.S. commitment raises questions about the prospects.

However, the first of these check-ins is five years away. Trump can’t formally withdraw the United States from the agreement until 2020.

Pizer notes that the predecessor to the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, failed in part because it imposed caps on countries’ carbon emissions, and most of the world balked.

“In my mind, this is the best we can do,” he said. “If there were a different way to do it, I’d be all over that.”
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Five living American presidents will come together Wednesday to pay final tribute to George Herbert Walker Bush, the nation’s 41st president, who died last Friday at the age of 94.

Former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will join the current commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, for Bush’s funeral services at the Washington National Cathedral, where they will hear a eulogy from George W. Bush, the late president’s son and the 43rd president.

Also scheduled to speak at the state funeral will be former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson, and historian Jon Meacham, the elder Bush’s biographer. Among the dignitaries who will be in attendance include Britain’s Prince Charles, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Lech Walesa, Poland’s former president.

WATCH: Mourners give their condolences

​Wednesday’s services will begin when a motorcade will deliver the ex-president’s flag-draped casket to the cathedral from the U.S. Capitol, where it lay in state Tuesday as thousands of mourners filed through the Rotunda to pay their final respects. An emotional moment during the public viewing occurred when 95-year-old former Senator Bob Dole was helped from his wheelchair and saluted his fellow Republican and World War Two veteran. 

After the funeral, former President Bush’s casket will be taken to Andrews Air Force Base and flown back to Houston, Texas for a second and final service on Thursday.

He will be laid to rest at his presidential library and museum at Texas A&M University in nearby College Station, next to his wife of 73 years, Barbara, who passed away in April, and their daughter Robin, who died of leukemia in 1953 when she was only three years old. 

President Trump has designated Wednesday as a national day of mourning in Bush’s honor. The New York Stock Exchange will be closed, as are most government offices.
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The body of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush returns to Texas for burial Wednesday after the funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral. Thousands of visitors paid their respect to the 41st U.S. president while his body was lying in state at the U.S. Capitol from Monday evening until Wednesday afternoon. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports dignitaries and the general public mingled in the Capitol’s Rotunda as they parted with the former leader.
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Incoming members of the Democratic Party’s new U.S. House majority say they’re ready to turn the energy of their campaigns into real power on Capitol Hill.

Rep.-elects Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and a handful of other liberal-leaning incoming Democrats used an orientation event for freshman lawmakers Tuesday sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics to stake out some of their top issues – from gun violence to health care to climate change.

They say they’re ready to leverage their victories at the ballot box into victories in Congress — an institution that prizes seniority.

Pressley said power is about more than just how many terms a lawmaker has served.

“It’s a confluence of things. It’s about the committees that we’ll be appointed to. It’s about the values- and issues-based caucuses that we’ll serve on. And it’s about us simply leveraging the platform that we have available to us as well as our social media networks,” Pressley said.

Pressley won election to the House by beating a fellow Democrat – longtime U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano – in a September primary.

Ocasio-Cortez said like-minded incoming Democratic members of the House have the numbers needed to press their case for change.

“We have a magic number in the House … and it’s 218,” she said. “Two hundred and eighteen is the magic number to get things done and how many member Democratic freshmen do we have? Sixty Three. Sixty-three of that 218 is brand new and 35 of that 63 have rejected corporate PAC money, 35 of that 63 is not funded by opioid companies, not funded by the NRA, not funded by for-profit health care, not funded by fossil fuels. Thirty-five are independent of the interests of corporate influence.”

Like Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez also won election by defeating another veteran Democratic incumbent – Joe Crowley – in New York’s June primary.

​Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats have to fight back against an opposition she said “is predicated on us being turned against each other, of us accepting the idea of zero-sum thinking that one community’s gain must be another community’s loss.”

“We know that all of our issues are tied and are the same,” she added. “There is no health care justice without gun violence reform.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley have both pledged to support Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker after Democrats take control of the House in January.

Other new and incoming Democratic House members who spoke at Tuesday’s event include Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania and Andy Levin of Michigan.

Pressley said the timing of Tuesday’s press conference wasn’t meant as a rejection of the Harvard orientation event.

On its website the school says the sessions are designed to help incoming House members “forge bipartisan relationships and learn practical skills of lawmaking just one month prior to taking the oath of office.” Since 1972, the program has hosted nearly 700 current and new member of Congress. 

“There is nothing adversarial,” Pressley said. “This is about us lifting up the voices, the stories, the struggles, the innovation and the ideas of the people that we represent. So I think it’s a good thing.”
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Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in Iowa on Tuesday that he would do everything he can to make climate change the defining issue of the 2020 Democratic presidential nominating campaign, despite resistance in regions of the country that his party would likely need to recapture the White House. 

More than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away in Charleston, S.C., fellow billionaire Tom Steyer — who, like Bloomberg, is weighing a 2020 Democratic presidential bid — held a roundtable discussion focused on voting rights in the nation’s first Southern primary state. 

The two deep-pocketed Democrats have been noncommittal about whether they will run for president in 2020, but on Tuesday they joined the growing list of visitors to early primary and caucus states.  

In an interview, Bloomberg didn’t provide a timeline for when he’d decide whether to seek the presidency. 

“I am obviously thinking about what the right thing to do is, but I think honestly I know that there’s a time by which I have to do something,” he said. “I also think that there are going to be a lot of events over the next few weeks or very small number of months that are going to be important.” 

Steyer said he is closely watching the decisions made by other Democrats, joking, “I assume there are going to be more Democrats running than there are going to be voters.” 

Skepticism in Trump states

While both men have put the climate atop their agendas, and spent millions promoting awareness and solutions, they could face skepticism in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where President Donald Trump won in 2016 by promising to protect the coal industry. 

“I will do everything for sure to try to make it the issue,” Bloomberg told reporters after visiting a solar-electric panel installation company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Every place I have gone, people always want to talk about the climate. They always want to bring up the fact that I’ve been very active in closing coal-fired power plants.” 

Steyer on Tuesday turned his focus to voting rights — one of the “five rights” in the platform he released last month — calling South Carolina the “perfect place” to begin that conversation.  

“If you look historically, South Carolina has a long history of trying to make sure that people don’t have equal votes,” Steyer said at the start of the town hall. He called South Carolina a state that, “whether people here enjoy it or appreciate it or are sorry about it,” plays an outsized part in the national conversation about the future of the country. 

Both men have been sharply critical of Trump and agree that he is not fit for the presidency. Steyer, who has amassed a 6 million-person email list from his “Need to Impeach” campaign against Trump, has repeatedly said Trump is a danger to the country and must be ousted. 

Speaking on Tuesday, Steyer described Trump as “the most corrupt president in American history who is a basic threat to our system and our safety and to the Constitution itself.” He said that many politicians, from both parties, “don’t think it’s good for their careers to talk about that.” 

Bloomberg, however, said, “It would be a mistake to say anything about that before you see what comes out of the investigation” being conducted by former FBI Director Robert Mueller into Russian election meddling. 

Backers of Democratic candidates

Bloomberg and Steyer spent millions during the 2018 midterm campaigns on behalf of Democratic candidates. Their travel gave them new opportunities to test their message and, perhaps most important, gauge the interest of Democratic primary voters and activists in the potential candidacies. 

In the Des Moines area, Bloomberg was visiting a community college’s wind-energy program and was scheduled to meet with mothers organized to curb gun violence before attending a screening of his climate change film, “Paris to Pittsburgh.” 

Bloomberg contributed $250,000 to the Iowa Democratic Party this year, giving him some claim to gains such as capturing two Republican-held House seats last month. He also has plans to meet with key Democratic operatives. But other potential candidates, including Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, have been more aggressive in their efforts. 
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Allegations of flagrant absentee ballot fraud in a North Carolina district have thrown the Election Day results of one of the nation’s last unresolved midterm congressional races into question.

Unofficial ballot totals showed Republican Mark Harris ahead of Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the 9th Congressional District. But the state elections board refused to certify the results last week in view of “claims of numerous irregularities and concerted fraudulent activities” involving mail-in ballots in the district.

The elections board has subpoenaed documents from the Harris campaign, a campaign attorney confirmed Tuesday. Investigators seem to be concentrating on activities linked to a longtime political operative from Bladen County, where allegations about mail-in absentee ballots also surfaced two years ago during a tight election for governor. 

In affidavits offered by the state Democratic Party, voters described a woman coming to their homes to collect their absentee ballots, whether or not they had been completed properly. State law bars this kind of “harvesting” of absentee ballots, which must be submitted by mail or in person by the voter or a close family member. 

If the allegations are accurate, “this is the biggest absentee fraud in a generation or two in North Carolina,” said Gerry Cohen, an election law expert and former longtime legislative staff attorney. “North Carolina has a long history of this kind of thing, particularly in rural areas.” 

Concerns about voter harvesting worried state election officials so much that they sent a letter to every Bladen County address where a voter requested a mail-in ballot asking the voter to call them if someone else tried take the ballot or fill it out.

“Elections officials will never come to your house to pick up your absentee ballot or tell you how to vote,” the letter warned.

The portion of Bladen County in the 9th District was the only place in the district’s eight counties where Harris won a majority of the mail-in ballots, according to unofficial election data. Bladen and Robeson County — where officials also have requested information — had the highest percentages of unreturned mail-in absentee ballots in the state, according to Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer. The total number of unreturned ballots for Bladen and Robeson in the 9th exceeded the current margin.

The district attorney in Raleigh announced this week that she’s been investigating potential Bladen County “voting irregularities” since last January. The investigation that began with claims from 2016 has now spread to this year’s primary and general elections, Wake County DA Lorrin Freeman said in an interview. 

Freeman said she was investigating in part because of comments made by McCrae Dowless of Bladen County during a State Board of Elections hearing in December 2016. Dowless worked as a contractor for Harris’ chief strategist in the campaign, Harris campaign lawyer John Branch confirmed Tuesday. 

Dowless, who served prison time in 1995 for felony fraud and was convicted of felony perjury in 1992, has worked on get-out-the-vote efforts for various local and legislative candidates through the years. Dowless put his name on an elections protest, backed at the time by the campaign of then-GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, that alleged a massive scheme'' by a local political group to run anabsentee ballot mill” to improperly submit votes for a write-in candidate for a position Dowless was seeking.

But the board peppered Dowless with questions about his own absentee ballot activities. Dowless acknowledged he hired people in 2016 to urge voters to turn in absentee ballot request forms, which is legal. In sworn testimony, Dowless said he never handled or filled out the actual ballots. The board dismissed Dowless’ protest but sent all of its evidence to local and federal prosecutors.

Visited by a reporter Tuesday at his Bladenboro home, Dowless declined to comment. He said the voice on the speaker phone in his hand was that of an attorney advising he decline to describe his election activities.

Documents released late Tuesday by the elections board as part of its investigation show Dowless appears to have been the top collector of Bladen County absentee ballot requests this fall. A copy of the Bladen election board’s log book shows Dowless turned in well over 500 applications.  

The elections board has said it will hold a hearing on the allegations on or before Dec. 21. Board members can call for a new election if they find enough problems that could have altered the outcome or cast doubts on the election’s fairness. An election would take place well after the new session of Congress convenes Jan. 3, likely creating a temporary vacancy.

Republican leaders say Harris, a Southern Baptist minister, should be certified the winner, saying no evidence has been made public that show he didn’t get the most lawful votes. 

“The campaign was not aware of any illegal conduct in connection with the 9th District race,” Branch said in a statement. 

Although Democrats won enough House seats nationally to take back the chamber come January, the 9th is gaining attention in part because a Republican has held the seat continuously since 1963. Democrats had hoped McCready, an Iraq War veteran, would end the streak, especially after Harris edged U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger in the May GOP primary.  

Incoming Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Tuesday that a “very substantial question” about fraud exists and hopes state officials “get to the bottom” of the controversy. Hoyer said Harris is “not eligible for being sworn into the House” at this point.

 
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