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(The Center Square) – The U.S. Senate voted 93-6 on Wednesday night against an objection to Arizona's Electoral College vote.

After a delay of several hours because protesters from a pro-Trump rally stormed the U.S. Capitol building, the U.S. House and Senate returned to their respective chambers Wednesday night to vote on the Arizona objection and continue certifying electoral votes from all the states.

The six Republican senators who voted in favor of the Arizona objection were Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Roger Marshall of Kansas and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.

Shortly after the Senate rejected the Arizona objection, the House voted against it, 303-121. All 220 Democrats in the House and 83 Republicans voted to reject the objection.

Earlier in the day, as per procedure, a joint session of the House and Senate was gaveled open by Vice President Mike Pence shortly after 1 p.m. After the electoral votes from Alabama and Alaska were certified Republican Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar objected, with the support of Cruz, to Arizona's electoral vote.

The House and Senate retired to their separate chambers for debate about 1:30 p.m. By 2:15 p.m., the two chambers had to be evacuated as the protesters entered the Capitol building.

Before the disruption, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York echoed each other’s sentiments, saying it was not the job of Congress to pick the president.

McConnell, who already had recognized former Vice President Joe Biden as the next president, said he supported President Donald Trump’s quest to challenge results in a number of states.

“Now we have these sweeping conspiracy theories, even though his challenges were rejected over and over, including some by judges he appointed,” McConnell said.

It is unclear whether further objections might be filed as several Republicans said they no longer would support the effort. The GOP originally considered objections regarding Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington, was one of the first to announce she was changing her stance on the objections.

“We must have a peaceful transfer of power,” she said in a statement. “The only reason for my objection was to give voice to the concern that governors and courts unilaterally changed election procedures without the will of the people and outside the legislative process.”

McMorris Rodgers said what happened at the Capitol was “disgraceful and un-American.”

Republican Sens. Steve Daines of Montana and James Lankford of Oklahoma also said they no longer would vote in favor of objections.

(The Center Square) – There will soon be a lot more questions about the 2020 election at the Wisconsin Capitol.

Legislative Republicans on Tuesday took the first step toward an official investigation into claims of voter fraud or voter malfeasance.

“Over the past year, year and a half, we’ve heard allegations of improprieties. Specifically, state laws not being followed,” Rep. Joe SanFelippo, R-New Berlin, said.

Sanfelippo is the second in command on the Assembly’s elections committee.

Republican lawmakers have been demanding answers since news broke about questions just what outside political activists Green Bay did for the city’s election office.

That report said the activists all but took over.

“I think it’s in everybody’s best interest to be open and forthcoming in how our elections are administered throughout the state,” Sanfelippo added.

Sanfelippo said he hopes that election managers voluntarily appear before his committee, and answer all of the questions they are asked. But he said lawmakers are ready to issue subpoenas if necessary.

“I can’t honestly see why anyone would not want to answer questions or provide documents,” Sanfelippo explained. “This just gives us the necessary tools to move forward.”

Sanfelippo and other Republicans say their goal with their investigation is to restore trust in Wisconsin’s election system.

Lawmakers plan to interrogate the head of Eco Health Alliance, the group accused of conducting dangerous coronavirus research in Wuhan, China just before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will hold a public hearing May 1 where Dr. Peter Daszak is expected to testify. Daszak is the president of Eco Health Alliance, a U.S. nonprofit health research company that used taxpayer-funded grants to conduct coronavirus research.

The lawmakers on the committee also allege that newly obtained documents show Daszak’s previous testimony misled the committee or misrepresented the facts.

“These revelations undermine your credibility as well as every factual assertion you made during your transcribed interview,” the letter said. “The Committees have a right and an obligation to protect the integrity of their investigations, including the accuracy of testimony during a transcribed interview. We invite you to correct the record.”

One of those obtained documents appears to show Daszak saying he plans to work with Wuhan researchers.

A federal grant database shows that Eco Health Alliance received millions of dollars since 2014 from the federal government to study coronaviruses that originate in animals and in some cases can transfer to humans, with an emphasis on China.

A key and highly disputed part of the inquiry is whether Eco Health Alliance’ research included making coronaviruses more dangerous,.

Under former President Donald Trump, the federal National Institutes of Health cut all funding to the group in question over the controversy.

Under the Biden administration, funding has been restored, and NIH has emphatically stated that Eco Health Alliance did not play a role in the start of the pandemic.

“Unfortunately, in the absence of a definitive answer, misinformation and disinformation are filling the void, which does more harm than good,” NIH said in a 2021 statement. “NIH wants to set the record straight on NIH-supported research to understand naturally occurring bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded through a subaward from NIH grantee EcoHealth Alliance. Analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrate that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.”

In 2022 and 2023 NIH awarded Eco Health Alliance a total of at least $1,230,594 to research “the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.”

The idea that the COVID-19 virus began in a Wuahn lab was once denounced as a conspiracy theory but has now gotten more widespread credibility.

The FBI announced last year after its investigation that COVID-19 most likely came from a Wuhan lab. That news came just after the Department of Energy also said the Wuhan lab was most likely the origin of COVID-19, though neither agency expressed a high degree of confidence in that theory.

Other groups have suggested it came from the Wuhan wet market, though no definitive answer has been settled on.

(The Center Square) – The former head of Wisconsin’s Republican Party and the man in charge of this summer’s Republican National Convention says he doesn’t see anyone but Donald Trump getting the nomination.

Reince Priebus told News Talk 1130’s WISN that after the former president’s resounding win in the Iowa Caucuses, Trump is the presumptive nominee.

“I think that Donaald Trump exceeded expectations,” Priebus said. “I think that he exceeded the mental threshold that Democrats and people that don’t like Trump wanted to out there. ‘Oh, he didn’t get 50%.’ I think it ended up being 51%.”

Trump doubled the vote totals of both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Halley in Monday night’s caucuses.

Priebus said that kind of victory will make it tough for either challenger to find a path forward, especially DeSantis, Priebus said.

“His play is that he is going to get second in South Carolina. That he’s going to talk to donors about whether any of these cases are going to matter, in regard to President Trump, and whether he should stay in to see how things go,” Priebus said. “[But] nothing has panned out in terms of those hopes and wishes.”

Haley, Priebus said, has a slightly different play. But he also doesn’t see it panning out.

“There is a small play that, maybe, Nikki Haley can somehow rally in New Hampshire, and somehow win in South Carolina,” Priebus said. “Her play is that she is going to have this inside straight going through New Hampshire. The reality is that Super Tuesday is March 5. Fifteen states are rolling on March 5. You need to have an enormous amount of money, and an enormous number of volunteers combined to do well in 15 state primaries,”

Priebus said that’s “a tough hill to climb.”

As for Trump’s play moving forward, Priebus said the former president needs to start running as the only Republican in the race and focus that race on President Biden,

“Act like the other campaigns don’t matter to you. Slowly focus on Joe Biden, do all of your speeches about him. Go to New Hampshire and South Carolina and start acting like you are the presumptive nominee. That’s number one,” Priebus said.” Number two, I’d start making demands through your campaign to say ‘I’m the presumptive nominee.’ And I would want the party to call me the presumptive nominee.”

Priebus said it looks more and more like nothing is going to stop the former president from getting the nomination at Milwaukee’s RNC in July.