Closing summary
Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker are in the home stretch of campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s run-off election for Georgia’s Senate seat. Polls indicate Warnock has the edge, while the weather may undercut Walker’s hopes that Republican voters will turn out massively for him tomorrow. Meanwhile, in New York, jurors are deliberating in the tax fraud trial of Donald Trump’s business.
Here’s what else happened today:
Former vice-president Mike Pence and Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski are among the few Republicans to condemn Trump’s call for the “termination” of the constitution.
Kamala Harris will swear in Los Angeles’s new mayor Karen Bass next week. Bass will be the first Black woman to lead the city.
Democrats have vastly outspent Republicans in the contest for Georgia’s Senate seat.
The supreme court’s conservative majority appeared ready to side with a Christian graphic designer who refused to make a website for a same-sex couple in a case over Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. The arguments also featured some eyebrow-raising comments from conservative justice Samuel Alito.
Manhattan’s district attorney has added a former justice department official with extensive Trump experience as he continues an inquiry into an alleged hush-money payment by the former president.
Anyone who’s flown through an American airport recently has probably seen signs encouraging them to make sure their drivers license or identification card is compliant with the REAL ID Act.
Passed in 2005 on the recommendation of the 9/11 commission, the law’s implementation has repeatedly been delayed, and the homeland security department today announced its effective date has been pushed back again, from 3 May, 2023 to 7 May, 2025 :
NEWS: DHS announces extension of REAL ID full enforcement deadline. Learn more at: https://t.co/98wN1dMV4z pic.twitter.com/z7QwmXGpao
— TSA (@TSA) December 5, 2022
The department cited the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as the latest hold up. States typically require applicants to present more stringent proofs of identity such as passports in order to obtain a REAL ID-compliant drivers license or identification card.
Once the 2025 deadline passes, such documentation will be necessary to get through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints at airports, as well as to access other federal agencies, the homeland security department says.
