(Washington) Two new Democratic senators were sworn in on Wednesday, giving control of the Senate to their party on the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration and Kamala Harris, who presided over the session as vice chair.
With victories over two incoming Republican senators for Georgia John Usoff and Raphael Warnock, the Democrats now hold 50 seats to the Republicans 50.
But the constitution grants the vice president the power to determine votes in a tie.
Former California Senator Kamala Harris presided over the swearing-in of the two elected members as well as the member designated to replace her, Alex Padilla.
The first female Vice President of the United States is welcomed upon arrival on the bike. Then she laughed as she read the formal procedures for her private meeting, which read: “To fill the vacant seat with the resignation of former Senator Kamala D. Harris of California.”
“It was so weird,” the 56-year-old former prosecutor joked, generating laughter.
The Georgia senators, the first Democrats to win these seats in twenty years in this conservative country, have made history in many other ways.
Photo by Mike Seagar, Reuters
Raphael Warnock and John Usoff
Raphael Warnock, 51, a pastor at the former Martin Luther King Church in Atlanta, became Georgia’s first black senator to be elected.
John Usov is the first Jewish senator from Georgia, and also, at 33 years old, the youngest Democratic senator to sit in the Senate since … Joe Biden, in 1973.
Think how far you have come. To the fact that your candidates at this historic moment are the young Jewish son of an immigrant and the black priest who occupies the chair. Martin Luther King, John Oseoff liked to repeat the campaign, to emphasize the development of this country marked by the scourges of discrimination.
“Extreme twitteraholic. Passionate travel nerd. Hardcore zombie trailblazer. Web fanatic. Evil bacon geek.”