Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. Rejecting Trump veto, Republican-led Senate backs defense bill

President Donald Trump suffered a stinging rebuke in the U.S. Senate on Friday when fellow Republicans joined Democrats to override a presidential veto for the first time in his tenure, pushing through a defense policy bill he opposed just weeks before he leaves office. Meeting in a rare New Year's Day session, senators voted 81-13 to secure the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto. U.S. distributes over 13.07 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines; 4.2 million administered -CDC

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 4,225,756 first doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and distributed 13,071,925 doses. The tally of vaccine doses distributed and the number of people who received the first dose are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, vaccines as of 9:00 a.m. ET on Saturday, the agency said. U.S. Senator Cruz leads long-shot Republican bid to overturn Biden's victory

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz on Saturday said he will spearhead a drive by nearly a dozen Republican senators to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory when Electoral College results are tallied in Congress on Jan. 6 – a largely symbolic move that has virtually no chance of preventing Biden from taking office. Cruz's effort is in defiance of Senate Republican leaders, who have argued that the Senate's role in certifying the election is largely ceremonial and had been looking to avoid an extended debate on the floor about the outcome. U.S. judge dismisses lawmaker lawsuit against Pence over electoral count

A federal judge on Friday rejected a lawsuit from a Republican congressman that sought to allow Vice President Mike Pence to reject Electoral College votes for Joe Biden when Congress meets on Jan. 6 to certify his victory over President Donald Trump. The latest long-shot attempt by Trump's Republican allies to overturn the Nov. 3 election was dismissed by one of Trump's own appointees to the federal bench, Jeremy Kernodle. He ruled that U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and a slate of Republican electors from Arizona could not show they suffered any personal harm "fairly traceable" to Pence's allegedly unlawful conduct and, therefore, lacked legal standing to bring the case. Romney urges sweeping vaccine plan as U.S. surpasses 20 million COVID-19 cases

U.S. Senator Mitt Romney on Friday urged the U.S. government to immediately enlist veterinarians, combat medics and others in an all-out national campaign to administer coronavirus vaccinations and slow a surging rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. The Utah Republican, who ran unsuccessfully for president as his party's nominee in 2012, called for greater action as the Trump administration fell far short of its goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans with a first of two required doses by the end of 2020. A record three million early votes cast in Georgia's U.S. Senate runoff races

A record 3 million early votes have been cast in the two Georgia runoff elections that next week will decide which party controls the U.S. Senate, according to a final tally released on Friday. The turnout figures, compiled by the University of Florida's U.S. Elections Project, indicate strong voter interest in Tuesday's elections that pit incumbent Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler against Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Pfizer and BioNTech to offer COVID vaccine to volunteers who got placebo

Pfizer Inc and its partner BioNTech Se plan to give volunteers who received a placebo in its COVID-19 vaccine trial an option to receive a first dose of the vaccine by March 1, 2021, while staying within the study. The trial's Vaccine Transition Option allows all participants aged 16 or older the choice to discover whether they were given the placebo, "and for participants who learn they received the placebo, to have the option to receive the investigational vaccine while staying in the study," the companies said on their website https://www.covidvaccinestudy.com/participants for trial participants. U.S. COVID-19 cases surpass 20 million as deaths mount

U.S. coronavirus cases crossed the 20 million mark on Friday as officials seek to speed up vaccinations and a more infectious variant surfaces in Colorado, California and Florida. The United States has seen a spike in number of daily COVID-19 fatalities since Thanksgiving with 78,000 lives lost in December. A total of 345,000 have died of COVID-19, or one out of every 950 U.S. residents, since the virus first emerged in China late in 2019. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi)

U.S. House Democrats introduce ethics, legislative reforms U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday unveiled a package of ethics and legislative reforms for the new Congress set to convene Sunday, including barring former lawmakers convicted of federal crimes from the House floor. Democrats are set to hold a narrower 222-211 in the 435-member House during the 117th Congress, with one vacancy and one race undecided.

Wisconsin pharmacist arrested on charges of sabotaging COVID vaccine doses A Wisconsin hospital pharmacist was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of sabotaging more than 500 doses of coronavirus vaccine by deliberately removing them from refrigeration to spoil, police and medical authorities said. The pharmacist, an employee of Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wisconsin, at the time that 57 vials of vaccine were found left out of cold storage earlier this week, has since been fired but has not been publicly identified, officials said.