Happy Thursday! As 2020 comes to a close, we can’t express in words how grateful we are for your support of The Morning Dispatch this year. We had no idea all the news we were up against when we launched daily publishing last January, but the community here has grown more than we could have ever imagined.

Cheers to 2020. We hope there’s never another year like it.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri announced Wednesday that he will object when Congress convenes on January 6 to certify the Electoral College results. The move will force lawmakers in both chambers to debate and vote on accepting Joe Biden’s victory, a vote Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had hoped to avoid. 

• President Trump was briefed on unconfirmed intelligence on December 17 that China paid bounties to non-state militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers, two senior Trump administration officials told Axios. The declassified intelligence comes six months after media outlets reported that Russians paid off Taliban insurgents to kill American troops. “Administration officials across multiple agencies are currently working to corroborate the initial intelligence reports,” Axios’ Jonathan Swan and Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian write.