Elections

There is every reason to be skeptical, even cynical, about the effect and impact of the Jan. 6 hearings on the political landscape.For one thing, most of the details of what happened are already in the public record. We already know that Donald Trump and his allies were engaged in a conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election and overturn the constitutional order. We already know that one of their plans was to derail certification of the election by Congress and use the resulting confusion to certify fraudulent electors for Trump instead. We already know that the “stop the steal” rally on the ellipse across from the White House was organized to put pressure on both Republican lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to follow through and “do the right thing,” as Trump put it.We have the memos and emails and text messages from Trump’s allies in and outside of Congress, each person trying to do as much as possible to help the former president realize his autocratic dreams. We know that Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee corresponded with the White House, pledging their support and assistance for the president’s efforts to contest the election. We know that John Eastman, a prominent member of the conservative legal establishment, wrote detailed guidance for Trump and his team, giving step-by-step instructions on how Pence could abuse the process to keep Joe Biden from ever taking office.We already know about — we already saw with our own eyes — the assault on the Capitol, the threats against the vice president and the heroism of the Capitol Police. And we know, or at least some of us know, that Jan. 6 was just the beginning and that Trump has continued to use all the power and influence at his disposal to put pro-coup Republicans on the ballot in as many states as possible. The insurrection may be over, but the plot to steal the presidency is intact.If all of this is already in the public record — if all of it is already part of our public knowledge — why bother with hearings?The right answer, I think, is spectacle.Most political theater is tedious and partisan. Cheap meat for a hungry base. But there are times when these theatrics can serve a real purpose for the public at large.In an article in the Fordham Law Review, Josh Chafetz — a law professor at Georgetown — makes a novel distinction between traditional congressional oversight and what he terms congressional “overspeech.”Oversight is (or at least is supposed to be) about good-faith fact-finding for the sake of public accountability — a central part of Congress’s role as it has developed over time. In this view, Chafetz writes, oversight hearings should be “primarily receptive in nature,” aimed at “drawing out new facts or at least new implications of old facts.”Overspeech, by contrast, is the “use of the tools of oversight” for performance, spectacle and theatricality. Overspeech is used to communicate directly to the public, to make an argument and to shape its views. It is a form of mass politics, in which “overspeakers” tailor their approach “to the media environment in which they operate” and “shape their behavior as to increase the likelihood of favorable coverage.”If oversight is meant to be the bloodless investigation of facts, then overspeech, Chafetz writes, is defined by its “performative elements, ranging from casting to scripting, from scenery to costuming, all of it aimed at more effectively communicating a public message.”Because it is often partisan, overspeech is also intentionally and deliberately divisive. And while this might seem to put it in conflict with the goal of public persuasion, Chafetz argues that the reality isn’t so simple. “In October 1973, the first votes in the House Judiciary Committee on matters related to impeachment were strong party-line votes,” he writes. “Nine months later, six of the committee’s seventeen Republicans voted for the first article of impeachment.” What started as a partisan issue, he continues, “became something else over time.”The Jan. 6 hearings should be about more than the facts of the investigation. They should be about the performance of those facts. The hearings, in short, should be a show, aimed directly at the casual viewer who might be too preoccupied with the price of gas or food to pay attention to an ordinary congressional hearing. And Democrats inclined to make them “bipartisan” or evenhanded should reject the temptation; it might do more good — it might be more effective — if this spectacle is full of rancor and fireworks.Spectacle is what we need, and judging from the first night of televised hearings on Thursday, spectacle is what we’re going to get. The members of the committee were direct and sharp-tongued — “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone,” Representative Liz Cheney said to her Republican colleagues during her opening statement, “but your dishonor will remain” — and they did not shy away from the chaos, disorder and excruciating violence of the insurrection.At one point, a police officer who was injured at the Capitol, Caroline Edwards, testified to seeing “officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos.”“I can remember my breath catching in my throat because what I saw was just a war scene,” she said. “It was something like I had seen out of the movies.”There is a larger point to make here as well. For the past year, Democrats have struggled to break through to the public; they have struggled to sell their accomplishments, such as they are. The Biden administration, in particular, has made a conscious decision to stick to so-called kitchen table or pocketbook issues and let its actions speak for themselves. But passivity of this sort does nothing but cede the field to one’s opponents.Because they promise to be an event, the Jan. 6 hearings give Biden a chance to take another approach: to fan emotion and use conflict, not conciliation, to make his case. There are no guarantees of success, but at the very least, both he and the Democratic Party have a chance to seize the initiative. They should take it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

The opening House hearing into the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was a compact and controlled two hours, designed as an overview of what was described as a methodical conspiracy, led and coordinated by President Donald J. Trump, to thwart the peaceful transfer of power and democracy itself.It was also an enticement to the American people to watch the next five scheduled hearings.Here are some takeaways:Trump was at the center of the plot.The committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, began laying out what they described as an elaborate, intentional scheme by Mr. Trump to remain in power, one unprecedented in American history and with dangerous implications for democracy.“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup,” Mr. Thompson said.Both leaders had blistering words for Mr. Trump and about the threat he poses to American democracy. They made it clear that, for all his ongoing bluster about stolen elections, Mr. Trump had knowingly spread claims about election fraud that people closest to him knew were false, tried to use the apparatus of government and the courts to cling to power, and then when all of that failed, sat back approvingly in the White House as a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol threatening to hang his vice president.Key figures around Trump never believed his lie of a stolen election.The hearing used the videotaped testimony of some of Mr. Trump’s closest aides and allies to show that the Trump campaign and his White House — and perhaps the president himself — had known well that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 election. It showed how Mr. Trump and his loyalists had used a calculated campaign of lies to bind his followers and build support for his attempt to stay in power, through extralegal means and violence.The committee played excerpts from videotaped interviews of former Attorney General William P. Barr, who said he had told Mr. Trump that the talk of widespread fraud in the 2020 election was “bullshit.” There was a clip of his daughter Ivanka Trump saying that she accepted Mr. Barr’s conclusions and of a campaign lawyer, Alex Cannon, who told Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, that Trump allies had found no election issues that could reverse the results in key states. “So there’s no there there?” Mr. Meadows responded, according to Mr. Cannon’s account.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsThe Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the House panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Former president Donald J. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump: In videos shown during the hearing, Mr.Trump’s daughter and son-in-law were stripped of their carefully managed images.At one point, in one of the most potentially damaging moments of the videotaped interviews, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is shown dismissing the threats of Pat A. Cipollone, then the White House counsel, to resign in the face of Mr. Trump’s machinations as “whining.”A Capitol Police officer who battled the rioters humanized the drama.Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who is believed to have been the first injured during the riot, testified in chilling detail about the first breach of police lines, in which she was crushed beneath bike racks that were pushed on her and a handful of other officers who had no chance to hold back the mob.“The back of my head clipped the concrete stairs behind me,” she testified, recounting the moment before she lost consciousness. Her testimony of continuing to fight off the rioters in efforts to protect the Capitol provided a striking contrast with the committee’s account of Mr. Trump sitting in the White House watching with apparent sympathy as the mob ransacked the building, yelling at aides who implored him to call off the violence and saying at one point, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.”Once she came to and beheld the scene from behind police lines, Officer Edwards said, her breath was taken away. She slipped in blood, saw fellow officers writhing in pain and suffering from bear spray and tear gas, and gazed out on what she described as a war scene unfolding outside the Capitol.“It was carnage,” she said. “It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw.”The Proud Boys mounted an organized effort.One of the witnesses, a British documentary filmmaker named Nick Quested who was embedded with the extremist Proud Boys, gave testimony that indicated that group’s leadership had conspired with another extremist organization, the Oath Keepers, well ahead of the riot to plan an attack that would breach the Capitol.Mr. Quested showed footage he had shot of the Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio, meeting clandestinely with Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers on Jan. 5, and he told of the group breaking away from a morning rally behind the White House on Jan. 6 to scout police defenses around the Capitol.“I am not allowed to say what is going to happen today because everyone’s just going to have to watch,” one woman said on video on the morning of Jan. 6, when no hint of an attack was evident.There is more to come on the role of Trump and RepublicansThe hearing concluded with a hint of what was to come in the next hearings, which committee members hope will show how Mr. Trump was personally responsible for the worst attack on the Capitol since the British ransacked it in 1814 and that he remains a threat to the American democratic experiment.The committee concluded with videos of the rioters themselves saying they believed they were invited to Washington that day by their president, who had asked them to fight for him.“He lit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of Jan. 6,” Mr. Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said of Mr. Trump.Ms. Cheney, whose insistence on condemning Mr. Trump and participation in the investigation have rendered her a pariah in her own party, said the case the panel would make would taint Republicans indelibly.“Tonight I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible,” she said. “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” More

Even if the Jan. 6 attack will not become a unifying moment for the country.The opportunity for the Jan. 6 attack to serve as a unifying moment for the country has already been lost.The initial bipartisan condemnation of it has given way to a partisan argument in which many congressional Republicans play down the attack. The Republican Party’s official organization described the riot as “legitimate political discourse,” and Republican leaders like Representative Kevin McCarthy quickly softened their initial denunciation. About half of Republicans voters say it was a patriotic attempt to defend freedom.But the facts about Jan. 6 still matter. On that day, a mob violently attacked the Capitol — smashing windows, punching police officers, threatening members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence — to try to prevent the certification of a presidential election. The rioters justified their attack with lies about voter fraud, and they received encouragement from top Republicans, including President Donald Trump and the wife of a Supreme Court justice.Last night, a House committee investigating the attack held its first public hearing, and today’s newsletter covers the highlights. These hearings are not going to transform the politics of Jan. 6, yet they do have the potential to affect public opinion on the margins. And the margins can matter.Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer, and Nick Quested, a documentary filmmaker.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesThere are still many Republican voters disgusted by what happened on Jan. 6. Nearly half say that finding out what happened that day is important. Almost 20 percent consider the attack to have been an attempt to overthrow the government, according to a recent CBS News poll. About 40 percent believe, accurately, that voter fraud was not widespread in the 2020 election.“I actually think that there is an opportunity,” Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist, said this week on our colleague Kara Swisher’s podcast. The hearings, Longwell added, can help prosecute the case for how extreme some Republican politicians have become.If Republican voters are divided over the attack and Democrats are almost uniformly horrified by it, the politicians making excuses for it remain in the minority. Candidates who base their campaigns on lies about voter fraud — as some are now doing in Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere — will have a harder time winning elections. Future efforts to overturn an election will be less likely to succeed.For the same reason, any Republicans who have consistently denounced the attacks — like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only two Republicans serving on the Jan. 6 committee — are especially important. They are demonstrating that it’s possible to hold very conservative views and nonetheless believe in honoring election results. Until very recently, that combination wasn’t even unusual: Ronald Reagan and many other Republicans won elections by earning more votes.The Jan. 6 hearings are part of a larger struggle over the future of American democracy. Americans will probably never come to a consensus on many polarizing political issues, like abortion, guns, immigration and religion. That’s part of living in a democracy.But if Americans cannot agree that the legitimate winner of an election should take office and if losing candidates refuse to participate in a peaceful transfer of power, the country has much bigger problems than any policy disagreement.Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the committee’s vice chairwoman.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe hearing:The committee, led by Cheney and Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, cast the Capitol attack as part of Trump’s “sprawling, multi-step conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 election. “Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup,” Thompson said.Lawmakers interspersed their presentation with videos of former Trump aides testifying that they had told the president that his claims of voter fraud were false. The committee also played never-before-aired footage of rioters attacking police officers.Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer whom the mob knocked unconscious and pepper sprayed, testified in person about the attack: “It was carnage. It was chaos.”Cheney addressed members of her party who remain loyal to Trump: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”What we learned:Trump believed the rioters were “doing what they should be doing,” Cheney said, and yelled at advisers who said that he should call them off. He said that rioters who chanted about hanging Pence “maybe” had “the right idea.”The committee played video of Bill Barr, the former attorney general, saying that he had called Trump’s fraud claims “bullshit” and “crazy stuff.” Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, testified that she “accepted” what Barr said.Footage shot by a documentary filmmaker showed members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, two far-right groups who stormed the Capitol, meeting on the evening before the attack.In video testimonies, several rioters said that they had stormed the Capitol in response to Trump’s summons. “He asked me for my vote and he asked me to come on Jan. 6,” one said.Cheney said that Pence, not Trump, ordered the National Guard to the Capitol during the attack, and that “multiple” House Republicans sought pardons over their efforts to overturn the election.Related:The hearing depicted Trump as “not just a rogue president but a would-be autocrat,” The Times’s Peter Baker writes.On Fox News, which did not broadcast the hearing live, Tucker Carlson called the attack “forgettably minor.”The F.B.I. arrested Ryan Kelley, a Republican candidate for Michigan governor, on charges stemming from Jan. 6.At least 21 Republican legislators joined the crowds in Washington on Jan. 6. Here’s where they are now.A bipartisan group of senators is nearing a deal to update the Electoral Count Act. One provision would clarify that the vice president cannot overturn election results.THE LATEST NEWSWar in Ukraine“Dead cities” in eastern Ukraine, ravaged by Russian attacks, have become the latest focal points in the war.Marking the 350th anniversary of Peter the Great’s birth, President Vladimir Putin compared himself and the invasion of Ukraine to Russia’s first emperor and his conquering exploits.Ukraine’s military and its government called for more arms from the West.The VirusIlana Diener holding Hudson, her 3-year-old son, at a trial for the Moderna vaccine last year.Emma H. Tobin/Associated PressThe White House has made millions of Covid vaccine doses available in anticipation that children under 5 will be able to get shots next week.Mysteries linger about how Covid spread to people, according to a new report from the W.H.O. on the origins of the coronavirus.PoliticsThe U.S. sped up its deportations of Haitian migrants last month, expelling nearly 4,000.Many state abortion bans that would go into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned do not contain exceptions once widely supported by abortion opponents.Carl Paladino, a Republican House candidate from New York, apologized for calling Adolf Hitler “the kind of leader we need today” last year.The House voted to pass legislation allowing guns to be confiscated from people deemed by a federal court to be dangerous. It garnered only five Republican votes.Other Big StoriesDuring the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, more than a dozen students remained alive in barricaded classrooms while officers waited over an hour for protective gear.A white police officer in Grand Rapids, Mich., was charged with murder over the shooting of Patrick Lyoya, a Black man, in April.The Justice Department is investigating the Louisiana State Police over the fatal beating of a Black motorist.The truth is out there: NASA will fund a study into U.F.O.s.Iran has begun dismantling U.N. cameras intended to monitor its nuclear program.A Broadway theater will be renamed to honor Lena Horne, a renowned Black singer and activist.Oklahoma’s softball team won the Women’s College World Series for the second straight year.OpinionsShanghai’s Covid lockdown exposed the myth of China’s superiority, Connie Mei Pickart says.For conservative Christians, calling mass shooters “evil” has become an excuse to avoid passing new gun laws, Esau McCaulley argues.MORNING READSBrewing beer at the Neuzelle monastery in eastern Germany.Patrick Junker for The New York TimesBeer lovers: Germany is facing a shortage of bottles.A full office return: How about … never?Modern Love: Is it time to stop privileging romantic connections over all others?A Times classic: How to keep your muscles into old age.Advice from Wirecutter: Tips for organizing your garage.Lives Lived: Dmitry Kovtun was one of two men suspected of poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, a fellow former spy who had defected from Russia, with radioactive polonium in a London bar. Kovtun died at 56.ARTS AND IDEAS Apps have struggled to reproduce the kind of real-world serendipity that puts a book in a reader’s hand.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesYour next great readIt seems impossible to replicate online the feeling of walking into a bookstore and discovering new books and authors. But some apps are trying.Several companies have tried to tackle the issue, with mixed results, Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth Harris write in The Times. This week, the app Tertulia came out. It uses a mix of artificial intelligence and human curation to distill online chatter about books and point readers to the ones that might interest them.But it’s not easy. “I don’t think anyone has found a tool or an algorithm or an A.I. platform that does the job for you,” Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, which analyzes the book industry, told The Times.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJohnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylst: Laurie Ellen Pellicano.This strawberry cake is a lighter take on the French fraisier. (See how to make it.)What to Listen toThe latest episode of “Still Processing” explores how one highway divided a Philadelphia community.What to ReadThe filmmaker Werner Herzog is making a foray into fiction with “The Twilight World.”Late Night“Exactly what you thought, but worse than you could have imagined”: Hosts weighed in on the first Jan. 6 hearing.Take the News QuizHow well did you follow the headlines this week?Now Time to PlayThe pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were innovating and navigation. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Scrumptious (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. Kevin Quealy — a talented data journalist and friend of this newsletter — will be The Upshot’s next editor.Here’s today’s front page. “The Daily” is about Chesa Boudin’s recall in San Francisco. “Popcast” answers listener questions.Natasha Frost, Claire Moses, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at [email protected] up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

The House select committee investigating the assault on the US Capitol in January 2021 said Donald Trump was at the centre of a sprawling conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that culminated in an ‘attempted coup’. Their presentation featured never-before-seen video from the attack by extremist Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol to try to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s win

January 6 hearing: Trump was at heart of plot that led to ‘attempted coup’
January 6 hearing: five key takeaways from the first primetime inquiry More

Asthaa Chaturvedi, Sydney Harper, Nina Feldman and Marion Lozano, Chelsea Daniel and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThis episode contains strong language.This week, voters in San Francisco ousted Chesa Boudin, their progressive district attorney. The move was seen as a rejection of a class of prosecutors who are determined to overhaul the criminal justice system.But what happened to Mr. Boudin is really a fine point at the end of a much longer story.On today’s episodeAstead W. Herndon, a national political reporter for The New York Times.Chesa Boudin in San Francisco on Tuesday. The vote against him is set to reverberate through Democratic politics as the party fine-tunes its messaging on crime before the midterms.Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated PressBackground readingBy ousting Mr. Boudin, voters in San Francisco put an end to one of the United States’ most pioneering experiments in criminal justice overhaul.The progressive backlash in California has sent a signal about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Astead W. Herndon contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky and John Ketchum.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli and Maddy Masiello. More

La guerra en Ucrania es una catástrofe interminable. Las fuerzas rusas, concentradas en el este, siguen infligiendo un daño terrible en los soldados y civiles ucranianos. Una infinidad de vidas han sido perdidas y trastornadas. Una vez más, el mundo debe afrontar la posibilidad de una guerra nuclear y lidiar con unas crisis de refugiados y del costo del nivel de vida que están empeorando. Este no es el “fin de la historia” que habíamos esperado.Se está dando otra transformación, aunque menos violenta: luego de tres décadas de intercambio, interacción e involucramiento, la puerta entre Rusia y Estados Unidos se está cerrando. Casi todos los días otra compañía estadounidense —incluyendo la más simbólica de todas, McDonald’s, cuyos arcos dorados anunciaron una nueva era hace 30 años— sale de Rusia. Los diplomáticos han sido expulsados, los productos han sido retirados y las visitas personales pospuestas. En los consulados cerrados, nadie está emitiendo visas y, aunque lo hicieran, el espacio aéreo estadounidense ahora está prohibido a las naves rusas. La única interacción significativa parece ser la emisión de sanciones y contrasanciones.Para una rusaestadounidense como yo, cuya vida se ha forjado en los intersticios de las dos culturas, es un cambio de circunstancias doloroso y desconcertante. Hay que ser claros: las medidas para reducir la capacidad de agresión del Kremlin son necesarias en lo político y en lo moral. Pero el daño colateral es una ruptura de vínculos que está destinada a reavivar estereotipos perjudiciales y a cerrar el terreno para la polinización intercultural. Sobre todo, la actual ruptura marca el fin definitivo de un periodo en el que la integración de Rusia con Occidente, por más conflictiva que fuera, parecía posible y el antagonismo entre superpotencias ideológicas era cosa del pasado.Al menos eso fue lo que sentí un cálido día de marzo de 1989 en Krasnodar, la ciudad provincial al sur de Rusia, cerca del mar Negro, donde crecí. Mi escuela iba a recibir a un grupo de estudiantes de último año de una preparatoria en Nuevo Hampshire: estaba por cumplir 17 años y hasta ese momento Estados Unidos solo existía en mi mente como un concepto abstracto. Era el villano de un espectáculo para las fiestas de fin de año, el objeto de la misión de Nikita Khrushchev de “Alcanzar y sobrepasar a Estados Unidos” y el hogar del programa de La guerra de las galaxias, solo uno de los muchos diseños de los imperialistas para acabar con la Unión Soviética.Pero esos chicos y chicas que llegaron al patio de la escuela vistiendo sudaderas y pantalones de mezclilla no parecían imperialistas ni amenazantes en ningún sentido. Eran como nosotros, pero mejor vestidos: tímidos, con buenas intenciones y fascinados. Tan solo unas horas antes, durante nuestra clase de entrenamiento militar habíamos estado montando rifles kalashnikov para usarlos contra agentes enemigos. Y aquí estaban, de pie frente a nosotros. Nos quedamos mirándonos los unos a los otros. Entonces, alguien sonrió, otra persona saludó. En cuestión de minutos, la desconfianza entre nosotros había desaparecido. “Estoy leyendo Crimen y castigo para las vacaciones de primavera”, me dijo un tipo alto con un arete de plata. “¡Raskolnikov es genial!”.Tengo un cuaderno verde en el que he guardado los nombres de ciudades estadounidense, junto con una carta de amor, un clavel seco y un montón de fotografías en blanco y negro, recuerdos de la magia de 1989: el muro de Berlín desmantelado, la cortina de hierro cayendo, el temible “nosotros” y “ellos” esfumándose en el aire que finalmente era libre. Al cantar “Goodbye America, where I have never been” (Adiós, Estados Unidos, a donde nunca he ido), un himno popular, nos estábamos despidiendo de Estados Unidos como enemigo, de Estados Unidos como un mito y anticipábamos el descubrimiento del Estados Unidos real. Las palabras como “fronteras” e “ideología” ya no eran relevantes. Los dos países parecían estar unidos por un anhelo compartido de paz.Los años que siguieron generaron una buena voluntad inmensa entre nuestras naciones. Como rusa en Estados Unidos, conocí a innumerables personas que la construyeron: un médico californiano que ayudó a crear centros de cardiocirugía infantil en toda la Rusia postsoviética, un director de cine del área de la bahía de San Francisco que organizó el primer festival de cine judío en Moscú y un capitán de Seattle que creó empresas marítimas conjuntas con pescadores en el lejano oriente ruso. Los graduados universitarios rusos, por su parte, acudieron en masa a Estados Unidos, aportando su cerebro y talentos a todo tipo de actividades, desde películas de Hollywood hasta la secuenciación del ADN. Hubo muchos matrimonios. En los años noventa, una popular banda rusa de mujeres plasmó ese espíritu cuando le imploraron, con los acordes de la balalaika eléctrica, a un hipotético “American Boy” que se las llevara.Esa fue la ruta que yo tomé. Dado que al casarme entré en una familia de antiguos disidentes protegidos por Estados Unidos, yo también fui testimonio del flujo de personas e ideas. El dinero también fluyó. Por ejemplo, mi primer trabajo remunerado en Estados Unidos, en 1998, consistió en traducir para el segundo simposio anual sobre inversiones ruso-estadounidenses, organizado por la Universidad de Harvard; participaba un gran elenco de estrellas de la banca internacional que se disputaban la atención de los invitados rusos, entre ellos el magnate Boris Berezovsky y Yuri Luzhkov, entonces alcalde de Moscú.Sin embargo, en algún punto del camino, la buena voluntad se frenó. Después de haber expresado su entusiasmo por el primer presidente ruso postsoviético, Boris Yeltsin, los líderes estadounidenses consideraron que su sucesor forjado en el KGB, Vladimir Putin, no era tanto de su agrado. Putin dejó en claro que eso no le molestaba. “Hegemonía estadounidense”, una frase de mi infancia soviética, empezó a aparecer en los medios de comunicación rusos pro-Kremlin. En Occidente, los rusos ya no eran vistos como rehenes liberados de un régimen totalitario, villanos reformados de las películas de James Bond o emisarios de la gran cultura de Tolstói y Dostoievski, sino como personas que compraban lujosas propiedades en Manhattan y Miami pagando en efectivo. El encanto entre los países y sus ciudadanos se atenuó, pero los intereses compartidos y los vínculos sociales se mantuvieron.La anexión de Crimea en 2014 fue un punto de inflexión. Es cierto que Putin ya había dado rienda suelta a su agresividad en Georgia y, de forma devastadora, en Chechenia, pero fue su pretensión de reclamar el territorio ucraniano lo que dio a Occidente la llamada de atención. Las sanciones subsecuentes impactaron fuertemente en la economía rusa. También proporcionaron al Kremlin amplios medios para azuzar el sentimiento antiestadounidense. Culpar a Estados Unidos de los problemas del país era una narrativa familiar, casi nostálgica, para los rusos, más de la mitad de los cuales nacieron en la Unión Soviética. La simple cantinela “la expansión de la OTAN”, “la agresión occidental”, “el enemigo en la puerta”, se repetía, haciendo creer a los rusos que Estados Unidos pretendía la destrucción de su patria. La propaganda funcionó: en 2018, Estados Unidos volvió a ser considerado como el enemigo número 1 de Rusia, con Ucrania, su “títere”, en segundo lugar.En Estados Unidos, las cosas no estaban tan mal. Pero la llegada de Donald Trump a la escena política mundial complicó la ya tensa relación ruso-estadounidense. Trump se encariñó con el abiertamente autoritario Putin, reforzando el sentimiento antirruso que había ido en aumento desde la intromisión del Kremlin en las elecciones presidenciales estadounidenses de 2016 y que rara vez distinguía entre Putin y el país que gobernaba. Los lazos económicos y culturales empezaron a debilitarse a medida que se hacía más difícil obtener visas y financiación. Aun así, hubo intercambios de estudiantes, se proyectaron películas y se realizaron visitas familiares, aunque a intervalos más largos.Los misiles rusos que atacaron ciudades ucranianas el 24 de febrero extinguieron esa luz parpadeante. Estados Unidos ahora proporciona miles de millones de dólares en armas para usarse contra Rusia y el objetivo declarado de Rusia es poner fin a la dominación global “irrestricta” de Estados Unidos. Los dos países, que en su día fueron aliados en la guerra contra la Alemania nazi, están librando una guerra indirecta. Mientras veo videos de padres rusos incitando a sus hijos a destruir iPhones o leo sobre las amenazas contra una venerable panadería de Seattle conocida por sus productos horneados al estilo ruso, me invade, sobre todo, la tristeza. Nuestro sueño postotalitario de un futuro pacífico y amistoso ha terminado.Aparte de causar un horror físico, la guerra de Putin en Ucrania está borrando muchos activos intangibles, entre ellos la buena voluntad colectiva de Occidente hacia Rusia. En el futuro de mis hijos no veo ningún milagro cultural parecido al que yo viví en 1989. Es una pérdida para ambos países y la de Rusia será mayor si Putin sigue redoblando la carnicería y el aislamiento. Pero ese futuro no está tallado en piedra. Al fin y al cabo, los años de la perestroika, cuando la Unión Soviética se embarcó en reformas a gran escala en nombre de la apertura, demostraron que Rusia es capaz de cambiar.Por ahora, empero, cada explosión en Ucrania también ataca las bondades de la relación entre Estados Unidos y Rusia. En la tierra de Putin, “Goodbye America”, que antes era una canción irónica llena de esperanza, se ha convertido en una oscura profecía autocumplida.Anastasia Edel (@aedelwriter) es la autora de Russia: Putin’s Playground: Empire, Revolution, and the New Tsar. More

How a documentary film-maker became the January 6 panel’s star witnessNick Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys after the 2020 election, will supply first-hand knowledge of the riots When the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack on Thursday got to the witness testimony at its inaugural hearing, it heard from an individual with first-hand knowledge about how the far-right Proud Boys group came to storm the Capitol.The panel’s star witness, Nick Quested, is an Emmy award-winning British documentary film-maker who founded the indie film company Goldcrest and embedded with the Proud Boys in the weeks after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election as part of a project about division in America.“We chose the Proud Boys because they’ve been so vociferous in rallies and protests around America, and they’ve emerged as a political voice and force, particularly in the summer of 2020,” Quested told the Guardian. “We felt they were a group worth following.”January 6 hearings get under way as US braces for revelations – liveRead moreQuested spent much of the post-2020 election period following around the Proud Boys and is considered by the select committee as an accidental witness to the group’s activities and likely conversations about planning to storm the Capitol on January 6.The documentary film-maker shot footage of some of the most crucial moments connected to the attack, starting with rallies in November and December 2020 which the Proud Boys attended alongside other militia groups including the Oath Keepers and the 1st Amendment Praetorian.Quested then managed to capture on camera a late-night rendezvous between Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, in an underground parking garage near the Capitol the day before January 6.The US justice department has referenced that encounter in indictments for seditious conspiracy against Rhodes and other militia group members, though Quested has told the select committee he does not believe that was a meeting to coordinate storming the Capitol.Quested also filmed the Proud Boys marching up the National Mall from the Save America rally at the Ellipse to the Peace Monument at the foot of Capitol Hill, where the group’s members found themselves stopped from moving further by the edge of the US Capitol police perimeter.Over several tense minutes, he photographed Joseph Biggs, one of the Proud Boys indicted for seditious conspiracy, having a brief exchange with another man in the crowd, who then confronted Capitol police in a moment widely seen as the tipping point of the riot.The confrontation sparked the crowd to overturn the police barricade – despite Quested holding on to the fencing to keep it upright – and Quested filmed the charge up Capitol Hill towards the inaugural platform on the west side of the Capitol building.“Why did I go over to the barriers in the first place? Look, there’s two types of people in this world. There’s people who walk to disturbances and people who walk away. I walk towards disturbances,” Quested said.Panel to connect Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in Capitol attack conspiracyRead more“I didn’t know there was a confrontation happening. I felt a disturbance in the crowd and I moved towards that confrontation. And that confrontation happened to be Ryan Samsel shaking the barriers. And then the weight of the crowd overwhelmed the officers at the barrier.”Late in the day on January 6, Quested filmed Tarrio’s reaction to news about the Capitol attack in real time, having gone to see Tarrio in Baltimore, Maryland, where he had retreated after being ordered out of Washington by a local judge the day before.Quested discussed his footage and more at the select committee’s inaugural hearing pursuant to a subpoena, having already testified on multiple occasions behind closed doors about his recollections and experiences around the Proud Boys on January 6.The documentary film-maker – originally from west London and educated at St Paul’s school in London – followed the Proud Boys in the post-election period after covering conflict zones including Afghanistan, Iraq, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Syria.Among other works, Quested produced Restrepo, the 2010 Oscar-nominated film that followed a platoon in Afghanistan for a year, and directed the 2018 duPont-Columbia award-winning film Hell on Earth, as well as more than 100 hip-hop videos, including with Dr Dre.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansUS politicsThe far rightHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More