For the Record’s Week in Review: Congress kicks off

Our thoughts are with the victims and loved ones following the horrific shooting in Florida on Friday. The news is devastating and we’re sending lots of love. The USA TODAY Network has full coverage of the event online.

Back at the Capitol, lawmakers  returned from their holiday break, and House Republicans immediately pissed off everyone from Donald Trump to Nancy Pelosi before the new Congress even convened. Meanwhile, Democrats previewed their plan to try to thwart Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare and Trump got briefed on Russian hacking.

GOP-controlled Congress got off to a rocky start

While everyone was still nursing their New Year’s hangovers Monday night, House Republicans were quietly meeting to decide the fate of the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, which is in charge of investigating complaints against lawmakers by outside groups. Despite objections from their party leaders, GOP lawmakers decided that they would just as soon not have an independent watchdog looking into their activities. The Republicans voted in favor of putting the independent office under the House Ethics Committee, which is run by lawmakers. Cue outrage by Democrats, government watchdog groups and even some Republicans.

President-elect Donald Trump was not pleased with the timing of the decision. “With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it ........may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS,” he tweeted. The hashtag refers to one of his favorite slogans: “Drain the Swamp.”

The tweet, combined with pushback from the public, sent Republicans scrambling into an emergency meeting on Tuesday – the first day of the new Congress — where they decided they didn’t actually want to gut the office after all. So, got an ethics complaint about a member of Congress? You still have a place to bring it.

Democrats ready for an all-out war on Obamacare

“Make America Great Again?” Not if you get rid of Obamacare. Then it’ll be more like “Make America Sick Again.” At least that’s the message Democrats in Congress were pushing hard this week.

Republicans have made clear that repealing Obamacare is top on their list of priorities, but they haven’t articulated a clear plan for replacement yet. Democrats, who are in the minority, don’t have much power to block a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. So they’ve basically executed a massive public relations campaign to try and make the GOP look bad.

"Less health care and it will cost more," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Politico. "And it will create chaos. Because you cannot repeal a plan and put nothing in its place. It doesn’t matter if you say the repeal won’t take place for year or two years.”

“And if they think we’re going to come in and save their butts when they screw it up? No,” he continued.

Trump: Russia attempted to hack but I still won fair and square

Following weeks of contentiousness, Trump and the intelligence community had a chat on Friday. After the meeting, Trump finally agreed with the intelligence community, President Obama and even some members of his own party that Russia had been involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee and other political groups. But he was quick to say that it did not affect the outcome of the election.

“While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful.”

The meeting came just after Trump told The New York Times that the focus on Russia had become a “political witch hunt.” He’s been briefed by intelligence officials before but still expressed lots of doubts. Earlier this week he took to tweeting quotes from Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Later he said that he wasn’t endorsing him, but rather “I simply state what he states, it is for the people."

The intelligence report has now been released to the public. You can find it here. The report says the one thing that Trump won't: Russia favored Trump and wanted him to win.

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments."

More from the USA TODAY Network 

• A congressman didn’t like a student painting that depicted cops as pigs so he took it down (USA TODAY)
• The president-elect was deposed this week (USA TODAY)
• McCain: U.S. has no strategy to deter cyber attacks (The Arizona Republic)
• Omarosa joins the Trump White House (USA TODAY)
• Sen. Corker says he thinks Russians gave emails to Assange (USA TODAY)