Democrats in the Senate voted to reelect Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as the minority leader of the party, according to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
“There’s nobody who works harder than Chuck, there’s nobody who tries to listen to more people than Chuck,” Manchin told reporters after a leadership meeting on Monday, confirming that Schumer would be the leader again.
Currently, the GOP holds the majority in the Senate. Races have not been called in North Carolina and Alaska, although it is projected that the two Republican senators up for reelection will win their respective races.
However, a runoff election for the seats currently held by Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) is scheduled for January, which could determine what party controls the Senate.
On Monday, senators made mention of the legal battle and allegations of voter fraud in several battleground states. Media outlets have called the presidential race for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, but the Epoch Times has not yet called the race pending the result of lawsuits and vote-counting.
Schumer branded President Donald Trump’s move to challenge the results of the election as “dangerous” and declared Biden the winner, while repeating Biden’s calls to “unify and heal.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), also in a speech on the Senate floor Monday, did not acknowledge media outlets’ calls for Biden over the past weekend.
“Let’s not have any lectures, no lectures, about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election and who insinuated that this one would be illegitimate too if they lost again—only if they lost,” the Kentucky Republican told other senators.
In the midst of the Trump campaign’s legal fight, a number of other GOP senators and representatives have backed him and said he’s within his rights to file lawsuits and look into allegations of irregularities or fraud.
“Our institutions are actually built for this,” McConnell also remarked, adding that the United States has a “system in place to consider concerns and President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.”
