Biden says forces behind January 6 attack ‘remain at work today’ – as it happened

The US politics blog is closing down after a day that saw Washington react to new revelations about what went on during the January 6 attack, while the Biden administration was rocked by inflation numbers that showed prices rising faster than expected last month. Senators are meanwhile still trying to reach an agreement on bipartisan gun control legislation, but no deal was announced.

Here’s a rundown of what happened today:

• President Joe Biden said in a speech that the forces behind the Capitol insurrection “remain at work today”.
• The January 6 committee’s decision to broadcast in primetime appears to have paid off, with more than 19 million people having tuned in, a number that’s expected to grow.
• The bad inflation numbers were good news for Republicans, who used them to hammer the Biden administration as midterms that could put them in control of one or both houses of Congress draw ever nearer. The White House meanwhile said it is “doing everything we can” to stop prices from rising.
• The filibuster only frustrates voters, former president Barack Obama said in a speech in which he also shared his opinions on big tech and issues of race in American society today.

The blog returns on Monday, as does the January 6 committee, which will hold its next hearing at 10 am eastern.

A coach for the Washington Commanders football team is going to pay — literally — for his comments casting doubt on the severity of the January 6 insurrection.

The team announced Jack Del Rio, an assistant coach who coordinates defense for the team in the nation’s capital, will pay a $100,000 fine after questioning why the protests that followed George Floyd’s death in 2020 didn’t get as much scrutiny as the Capitol attack, which he called a “dust-up”.

Read more about it here:

The number of viewers of last night’s January 6 committee hearing has topped 19 million, The New York Times reports, a figure that’s nowhere near what the state of the union address or presidential debates get, but still much more than the average congressional hearing.

According to the Times:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}That number will grow in the coming hours, as more networks are tallied and out-of-home viewing is factored in. Nielsen is expected to have a final viewership figure on Friday evening.

By scheduling a congressional hearing for 8 to 10 p.m., committee members and Democrats were hoping to make the case to the biggest audience possible. ABC, CBS and NBC pre-empted their prime-time programming and went into special-report mode to cover it live.

Though the Thursday night figure pales next to presidential debates (63 million to 73 million) or this year’s State of the Union address (38 million), it’s still much larger than the audience that would normally watch a daytime congressional hearing. And it’s in the ballpark of television events like a big “Sunday Night Football” game or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The Washington Post has published more details about the activities around the 2020 election of Ginni Thomas, wife of conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.

The newspaper’s latest report said she sent 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona form emails encouraging them to “choose” their own presidential electors and ignore Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

According to the Post:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The message, just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, urged lawmakers to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure” and claimed that the responsibility to choose electors was “yours and yours alone.” They had “power to fight back against fraud” and “ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen,” the email said.

Among the lawmakers who received the email was then-Rep. Anthony Kern, a Stop the Steal supporter who lost his reelection bid in November 2020 and then joined U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) and others as a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence, a last-ditch effort to overturn Biden’s victory. Kern was photographed outside the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6 but has said he did not enter the building, according to local media reports.

Kern did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. He is seeking his party’s nomination for a seat in the Arizona state Senate and has been endorsed by former president Donald Trump.

On Dec. 13, the day before members of the electoral college were slated to cast their votes and seal Biden’s victory, Thomas emailed 22 House members and one senator. “Before you choose your state’s Electors … consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” the email said. It linked to a video of a man urging swing-state lawmakers to “put things right” and “not give in to cowardice.”

Speaker of the House Russell “Rusty” Bowers and Rep. Shawnna Bolick, the two recipients previously identified, told The Post in May that the outreach from Thomas had no bearing on their decisions about how to handle claims of election fraud.

But the revelation that Ginni Thomas was directly involved in pressing them to override the popular vote — an act that would have been without precedent in the modern era — intensified questions about whether her husband should recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 presidential election and attempts to subvert it. Ginni Thomas’s status as a leading conservative political activist has set her apart from other spouses of Supreme Court justices.

Today has been a packed news day, except on one topic: gun control. Senators in Washington are still negotiating over a measure to respond to the recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York that can win bipartisan support, but have yet to announce a deal.

The chamber’s top Democrat was as recently as yesterday sounding optimistic about a deal’s prospects, but gun legislation is extremely difficult to find a consensus on in Congress, and previous negotiations have collapsed unexpectedly.

In Oregon, things are moving a bit faster. The Associated Press reports that a signature campaign to put an initiative before voters that would tighten down on gun access has seen a surge in interest following the shootings:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}When Raevahnna Richardson spotted a woman standing outside a library in Salem, Oregon, gathering signatures for a gun-safety initiative, she made a beeline to her and added her name.

“I signed it to keep our kids safe, because something needs to change. I have a kid that’s going to be in first grade this upcoming season, and I don’t want her to have to be scared at school,” Richardson said.

“To keep our kids safe.” It’s something that so many parents across the United States are worried about after the horrific massacre of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. That mass shooting has given the Oregon ballot initiative huge momentum, with the number of volunteers doubling to 1,200 and signatures increasing exponentially, organizers said.

With the U.S. Senate unlikely to pass a “red flag” bill and the majority of state legislatures having taken no action on gun safety in recent years, or moving in the opposite direction, activists see voter-driven initiatives as a viable alternative.

Monday will also bring testimony from Eugene Goodman, the Capitol police officer who famously confronted rioters on January 6, CNN reports.

Goodman’s testimony will come in the federal court trial of rioter Kevin Seefried, who paraded a Confederate flag around the Capitol, not before the hearing of the January 6 committee in Congress.

A one-time acting US attorney general and a former Fox News editor are among the guests expected at the upcoming January 6 committee hearings, NBC News reports.

Jeffrey Rosen, who took over as attorney general for the final week’s of Donald Trump’s term following William Barr’s resignation from the post, will appear at the committee’s third hearing next Wednesday, alongside Richard Donoghue, a former acting deputy attorney general, and Steve Engel, a former assistant attorney general. According to NBC, the “hearing will offer evidence about Trump’s unsuccessful plan to oust Rosen and replace him with another DOJ official who was more supportive of Trump’s fraud claims.”

For the committee’s second hearing on Monday of next week, ex-Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt will be among the guests. He made the decision to call the crucial state of Arizona for Biden in the 2020 election, and said he was subjected to “murderous rage” from Trump supporters for it.

Monday and Wednesday’s hearings both begin at 10 am eastern time.

Joe Biden warned that the forces behind the January 6 attack had not been defeated, and said no one should be able to hold “a dagger at the throat of our democracy.”

Speaking in Los Angeles the day after the committee investigating the insurrection held a closely watched hearing, the president said he remained worried about the fallout from the events at the Capitol.

“It’s important the American people understand what truly happened, and to understand that the same forces that led January 6 remain at work today,” Biden said.

“We’re seeing how the battle for the soul of America has been far from won. But I know together, and I mean this, we can unite and defend this nation, Democrat and Republican, allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy.”

The president said he did not end up watching the hearing, which will continue on Monday.

The new Air Force Ones will probably look like the old Air Force Ones after all. Politico reports that the Biden administration has opted to scrap a paint scheme chosen by Trump during his time in the White House for the next batch of presidential jets due to overheating problems.

From their report:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The darker paint scheme would have required additional modifications to cool some of the components, potentially driving up costs, the Air Force said.

For this reason, the White House ultimately chose to scrap the Trump plan.

“The Trump paint scheme is not being considered because it could drive additional engineering, time and cost,” said the administration official, who asked for anonymity to discuss an internal issue.

While the White House has not released a mock-up of the new Air Force Ones, which will consist of two modified Boeing 747-8s, it is likely they will revert to the classic JFK-era light blue and white scheme. The new planes aren’t expected to fly until 2026, according to Air Force budget documents.

The new paint decision is good news for Boeing, which would have had to pay out-of-pocket to fix the heating problem. The company on Friday referred questions on the paint job to the Air Force.

President Joe Biden defended his administration’s approach to fighting inflation following this morning’s release of numbers that were much worse than predicted.

In a statement, the president directed blame towards Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, which has caused prices for commodities like oil and food to spike:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Putin’s Price Hike hit hard in May here and around the world: high gas prices at the pump, energy, and food prices accounted for around half of the monthly price increases, and gas pump prices are up by $2 a gallon in many places since Russian troops began to threaten Ukraine. Even as we continue our work to defend freedom in Ukraine, we must do more—and quickly—to get prices down here in the United States.

Biden also made a pitch for action on his own legislative priorities:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} I call on Congress to pass a bill to cut shipping costs this month, and get it to my desk, so we can lower the price of goods. And, I call on Congress to pass legislation to cut costs for families like energy bills and prescription drugs. The deficit has come down more under my watch as President than at any time in history, but if Congress would pass tax reform to make the wealthiest Americans and big corporations pay their fair share, we could reduce this inflationary pressure even more.

Much of Congress’s energy right now is dedicated to finding a bipartisan compromise on gun control following a spate of recent mass shootings, and some legislation that appeared to have momentum in recent months has already fallen by the wayside.

Michelle Obama is making fresh exhortations to people to “double down” on efforts to protect abortion rights in the US, ahead of an expected final ruling in the next few weeks from the US Supreme Court on a key abortion case out of Mississippi that also directly asks the court to overturn Roe v Wade.

“As we prepare for the decision from the supreme court on the fate of Roe v Wade, I know so many of us are anxious and wondering if there’s anything we can do. Let’s be clear: this potential decision would be the culmination of a decades-long strategy to take away a woman’s right to make decisions about her own health,” she wrote on Instagram later on yesterday.

She added: “So we’ve got to get to work today. We’ve got to press our elected leaders at every level to pull every lever they can to protect the right to safe, legal abortion – right now. And we’ve got to make sure that everyone we know is voting … in every single election … for decades if that’s what it takes.”

Former president Barack Obama and the former first lady had released a joint statement after the leak [of the court’s draft opinion favoring striking down Roe] criticizing the opinion, saying it would “relegate the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues,” the Hill reported on Thursday.

Michelle Obama continued in her post, in part: “We can’t afford to get cynical or throw our hands up and walk away. We have to double down, get even more organized and join the activists who’ve been doing this work away from the spotlight for so long. And we’ve got to do it not just for ourselves but for the next generation.”

The United States rolled out a raft of actions to support migrants on Friday as president Joe Biden and fellow leaders prepare to issue a joint declaration on migration on the final day of an Americas summit beset by diplomatic squabbling, Reuters reports.

The Biden administration pledged hundreds of millions of aid to Venezuelan migrants across the Western Hemisphere, as well as programs to support temporary family-based visas for Cubans and Haitians and ease the hiring of Central American workers on Friday.

The announcements are set to accompany a US-led pact dubbed the “Los Angeles Declaration” that aims to create incentives for countries taking in large numbers of migrants and spread responsibility across the region. But some analysts are skeptical there will be many meaningful commitments.

The plan caps the Summit of the Americas hosted by Biden in Los Angeles that was designed to reassert US leadership and counter China’s growing economic footprint in the region.

However, that message was clouded by a partial boycott by leaders, including Mexico’s president, in protest at Washington’s exclusion of US antagonists Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the gathering.

At the summit’s opening session on Thursday, leaders from Argentina and tiny Belize took to the podium to rebuke Biden face-to-face over the guest list, underscoring the challenge the global superpower faces in restoring its influence among poorer neighbors.

The declaration, due to be presented by Biden and other leaders later on Friday, will call on governments in the region to expand their own temporary worker programs, said a senior US official who previewed the plan.

Some countries are unlikely to endorse the migrant declaration, according to a person familiar with the matter. Some Caribbean states would not approve it, an official at the summit said.

Today has been dominated by the aftermath of Thursday evening’s January 6 committee hearings, which began building the case that Trump played a major role in orchestrating the assault on the Capitol, while shedding light on the other forces at work in Washington that day.

Meanwhile, Republicans have seized on a worryingly high inflation reading to press their case for being in charge.

Here’s what else is going on today:

• The January 6 hearing cut through propaganda that’s been spread about the insurrection, said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic lawmaker on the committee.
• Trump responded to his daughter Ivanka Trump’s statement that she never really believed the 2020 election was stolen.
• The bad inflation numbers were good news for Republicans, who used them to hammer the Biden administration as midterms that could put them in control of one or both houses of Congress draw ever nearer.
• The filibuster only frustrates voters, former president Barack Obama said in a speech in which he also shared his opinions on big tech and issues of race in American society today.

There’s only one group of Americans left who can’t access Covid-19 vaccines: kids under five. Next week, a series of hearings and decisions may offer clarity on when young children will get access to the shots, and give parents nationwide a path back to normalcy.

The Associated Press has a look at what to expect:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}On Wednesday, both Moderna and Pfizer will have to convince what’s essentially a science court — advisers to the Food and Drug Administration — that their shots work well in babies, toddlers and preschoolers.

Kids under 5 are the only group not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S. If the agency’s advisers endorse one or both shots for them — and the FDA agrees — there’s still another hurdle. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must recommend whether all tots need immunization or just those at high risk from the virus.

Adding to the complexity, each company is offering different dose sizes and number of shots. And the week won’t even start with the littlest kid debate: Moderna first will ask FDA’s advisers to support its vaccine for older children.

Only a handful of countries, including China and Cuba, have offered different types of COVID-19 vaccinations to children younger than 5.

Former president Barack Obama has taken aim at the filibuster, saying the Senate procedure so frustrates the legislative process that it makes Americans feel like voting is futile.

Obama has plenty of experience with the filibuster, which Republicans used repeatedly to block his legislative priorities during his two terms in office, though he did have notable successes such as the landmark Obamacare health care overhaul.

From Obama’s speech at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit:

He also discussed race:

And big tech: