‘Shameful power grab’: Pennsylvania Republicans refuse to seat Democratic state lawmaker

GOP state senators bar elected Democrat from taking oath of office in chaotic opening session

Donald Trump’s attempts to undermine election integrity and overturn the will of American voters resonated in Pennsylvania’s state legislature on Tuesday, as Republicans refused to seat a Democratic lawmaker elected to office in November.

GOP lawmakers also voted to remove the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor John Fetterman, who serves as the state Senate’s president, from presiding over the session and to replace him with a Republican.

Democratic state Senator Jim Brewster has effectively been barred from taking the oath of office, as Republicans argued that pending litigation over the outcome of his race must first play out in the courts.

“This is a shameful power grab that disgraces the institution," Governor Tom Wolf said in a statement. “It is simply unethical and undemocratic to leave the district without a voice simply because the Republicans don’t like the outcome of the election… I'll do everything in my power to ensure voters have the final say in our elections.”

At issue are mail-in ballots that did not have a handwritten date on an outer enveloped, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that those ballots should be counted.

Republicans sought to block Brewster, whose election had been certified, and commanded an apparent parallel proceeding on Tuesday to the one led by Lt Gov Fetterman, who repeated, “The chair will not cede the rostrum, the chair will not cede the rostrum, the chair will not cede the rostrum.”

When he called on Brewster to take the oath, Republican President Pro Tempore Jake Corman refused.

Democratic state Senator Anthony Williams objected, shouting to lawmakers that Democrats will “not participate in this farce."

“This is inappropriate,” he said. “You are breaking the Constitution and the laws of the commonwealth and violating the oath of office you have actually taken. There is nothing about this day that is appropriate. Nothing. We will not lay down and roll over because you got former folks on that side of the aisle. This is about Pennsylvania, not Democrats or Republicans.”

“What unfolded on the Senate floor today was un-American,” Lt Gov Fetterman said.

The chaos at the state legislature in Harrisburg echoed outside, as roughly 200 Trump supporters gathered on the Capitol steps to call for state lawmakers to decertify the results of the 2020 presidential election, after Joe Biden carried the critical battleground state by roughly 2 percentage points.

State legislatures have carried shades of the political turmoil in Washington, with lawmakers using the president’s false fraud claims as justification for legislation to suppress votes.

A Pennsylvania Republican intends to introduce legislation that limits whether voters can request absentee ballots. And in Georgia, Republicans have proposed a measure to “crack down” on ballot absentee drop boxes that were implemented amid postal service delays and Covid-19 restrictions – but the state’s Senate Republican Caucus invoked the same baseless claims and false assertions about ballot security used by the president to justify the legislation.