Good morning, happy new year and welcome to The Independent’s rolling coverage of the presidential transition as Donald Trump’s administration enters its final weeks.

Donald Trump ended 2020 by taking credit for the “miracle” vaccines actually developed by private companies, not the federal government, to tackle the coronavirus, claiming in a video address posted to social media: “Everybody’s calling to thank me.”

“Thanks to Operation Warp Speed we developed a vaccine in just nine months. We’ve already begun a nationwide vaccination programme, and we’re sending the vaccine all over the world,” he said in the clip. 

“The world will benefit, we’ll benefit, and everybody’s calling to thank me. They said it would take a medical miracle, and that’s exactly what it is.”

The likes of Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna might have something to say about that.

The outgoing president chose to make his remarks less than 24 hours after the country suffered its deadliest day of the pandemic so far, the US recording 3,763 fatalities on Wednesday. 

More than 345,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 overall.

Here’s John T Bennett’s report.

By contrast, president-elect Joe Biden marked the turning of the year by praising frontline medical staff for their heroism during the pandemic, reminding the American public on ABC’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve broadcast from Times Square oin New York City: “We owe them, we owe them, we owe them.”

“My mother used to have an expression. Bravery resides in every heart and someday it’ll be summoned. [In] the people we’re honoring tonight, it was summoned and they stepped up and they’re brave, they did so much,” he said.

“They risked their lives, they’ve done so much for us and we owe them, we owe them, we owe them.”

As rebel Republicans continue to back the president’s call to overturn the electoral results ahead of their certification in the Senate on 6 January, vice president Mike Pence has broken ranks to ask a federal judge to drop Texas congressman Louie Gohmert’s latest legal challenge, which would have granted him additional powers as veep to overturn the outcome.

Gohmert’s lawsuit, filed earlier this week and supported by a cabal of fellow GOP representatives, seeks to expand Pence’s role during next week’s session in the upper chamber of Congress, which he will preside over and sees lawmakers formally tot up the states’ Electoral College results to certify Joe Biden as the winner.

But in a Thursday brief fired off to Texas-based US district judge Jeremy Kernodle, himself appointed by Trump, Pence said he was not a proper defendant to the suit.

“A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction,” a Department of Justice attorney representing Pence wrote.

His boss won’t like that one bit, as the vice president is well aware, hence his fleeing abroad as soon as his duties are done.

Missouri GOP senator and Trump loyalist Josh Hawley has attracted plenty of derision since announcing his intention to protest Congress certifying the Electoral College results on Wednesday, with fellow Republican Ben Sasse of Nebraska the latest to call him out, issuing a detailed rebuke to his “dangerous ploy” on Facebook.

Here’s a couple of choice extracts:

But let’s not get too carried away in praising Sasse for belatedly doing the right thing.

Another member of the GOP taking to social media to call out the mendacity of the president’s acolytes is Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who warns in a new video:  “Members of Congress are planning to try to overthrow this election by using debunked conspiracy theories. Let’s be clear – they won’t succeed and they all know it.”

In a closer look at this president’s last few months in office, The New York Times has published a detailed new report on how he wanted to approach the worsening coronavirus pandemic.

Overheard yelling at his son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner on 19 August, Trump reportedly demanded to “do what Mexico does” when it comes to testing for Covid-19.

“They don’t give you a test till you get to the emergency room and you’re vomiting,” he said during a gathering of top aides in the Oval Office.

Yeesh. You can almost smell the compassion.

Here’s Josh Marcus with a little more from that damning account of this administration’s handling of the election and the pandemic in The New York Times.

South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham has broken with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s opposition to an increase of the $600 coronavirus relief direct payments to $2,000 and called for a stand-alone vote on the matter, which will please Trump and Democrats alike.

Graig Graziosi has this report.

Things are not going at well for the two Republican candidates in the Peach State, with their Democratic rivals ahead in the polls and Kelly Loeffler accused of “campaigning with a Klansman” on Sunday.

And now, just like Trump in October, David Perdue is having to step back from the campaign trail after coming into contact with a Covid-19 sufferer.

The hard-working Josh Marcus has more on this one too.