Elections

This month, the first crop of books about the end of Donald Trump’s administration has prompted speculation: Was the president plotting to remain in power through some kind of coup?The question has arisen because the Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker report in their book “I Alone Can Fix It” that Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saw the president’s postelection maneuverings in that light.General Milley had no direct evidence of a coup plot. But in the days after Mr. Trump’s electoral defeat, as the president filled top military and intelligence posts with people the general considered loyal mediocrities, General Milley got nervous. “They may try,” but they would not succeed with any kind of plot, he told his aides, according to the book. “You can’t do this without the military,” he went on. “You can’t do this without the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. We’re the guys with the guns.”While some might greet such comments with relief, General Milley’s musings should give us pause. Americans have not usually looked to the military for help in regulating their civilian politics. And there is something grandiose about General Milley’s conception of his place in government. He told aides that a “retired military buddy” had called him on election night to say, “You represent the stability of this republic.” If there was not a coup underway, then General Milley’s comments may be cause more for worry than for relief.Were we really that close to a coup? The most dramatic and disruptive episode of Mr. Trump’s resistance to the election was Jan. 6, and that day’s events are ambiguous.On the one hand, it is hard to think of a more serious assault on democracy than a violent entry into a nation’s capitol to reverse the election of its chief executive. Five people died. Chanting protesters urged the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence, who had refused Mr. Trump’s call that he reject certain electoral votes cast for Joe Biden.On the other hand, Jan. 6 was something familiar: a political protest that got out of control. Contesting the fairness of an election, rightly or wrongly, is not absurd grounds for a public assembly. For a newly defeated president to call an election a “steal” is certainly irresponsible. But for a group of citizens to use the term was merely hyperbolic, perhaps no more so than calling suboptimal employment and health laws a “war on women.” Nor did the eventual violence necessarily discredit the demonstrators’ cause, any more than the July 2016 killing of five police officers at a rally in Dallas against police violence, for instance, invalidated the concerns of those marchers.The stability of the republic never truly seemed at risk. As Michael Wolff writes of Mr. Trump in his new book, “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” “Beyond his immediate desires and pronouncements, there was no ability — or structure, or chain of command, or procedures, or expertise, or actual person to call — to make anything happen.” Mr. Trump ended his presidency as unfamiliar with its powers as with its responsibilities. That is, in a way, reassuring.The problem is that Mr. Trump’s unfocused theory of a stolen election had a distilling effect, concentrating radical tendencies — first in his staff members and later in his followers nationwide. Rational voices exited his inner circle. After Attorney General William Barr told reporters that he knew of no evidence of widespread voter fraud, he was out. Rudolph Giuliani was in, along with a shifting cast of less stable freelancers, including the lawyer Sidney Powell, with her theories of vote-switching ballot machines and Venezuelan stratagems. Now the president was not only thinking poorly; he was also doing so with poorer information. That was the first distillation.The effect of the president’s theory on disappointed voters was more complicated. Republicans had — and still have — legitimate grievances about how the last election was run. Pandemic conditions produced an electoral system more favorable to Democrats. Without the Covid-era advantage of expanded mail-in voting, Democrats might well have lost more elections at every level, including the presidential. Mr. Wolff writes that, as Republicans saw it, Democrats “were saved by this lucky emphasis; that was all they were saved by.”Nor was it just luck; it was an advantage that, in certain places, Democrats manipulated the system to obtain. The majority-Democratic Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of a Democratic Party lawsuit to extend the date for accepting mail-in ballots beyond Election Day.Whether the country ought now to return to pre-Covid voting rules is a legitimate matter for debate. But Mr. Trump’s conspiracy thinking produced another “distillation,” this time among supporters of the perfectly rational proposition that election laws had been improperly altered to favor Democrats. (To say that the proposition is rational is not to say that it is incontestably correct.) Those who held this idea in a temperate way appear to have steadily disaffiliated from Mr. Trump. By Jan. 6, the grounds for skepticism about the election were unchanged. But they were being advanced by an infuriated and highly unrepresentative hard core.The result was not a coup. It was, instead, mayhem on behalf of what had started as a legitimate political position. Such mixtures of the defensible and indefensible occur in democracies more often than we care to admit. The question is whom we trust to untangle such ambiguities when they arise.For all Mr. Trump’s admiration of military officers, they wound up especially disinclined to accommodate his disorderly governing style. General Milley was not alone. One thinks back to such retired generals as the national security adviser H.R. McMaster and the defense secretary James Mattis, both of whom broke with Mr. Trump earlier in his term.We might be grateful for that. But our gratitude should not extend to giving military leaders any kind of role in judging civilian ones.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

Texas Special Runoff Election Results: Sixth Congressional District – The New York Times

Elections|Texas Special Runoff Election Results: Sixth Congressional Districthttps://nyti.ms/2UVk2lN More

Mr. Ellzey, a state representative, was victorious in a runoff against Susan Wright, whose husband, Ron Wright, represented the Sixth Congressional District before he died of Covid-19.AUSTIN, Texas — The widow of a Texas congressman who died early this year of Covid-19 lost to a freshman state representative on Tuesday in a special runoff election between Republicans seeking to fill the vacant House seat.State Representative Jake Ellzey, who narrowly missed capturing the Republican nomination for the seat in 2018, defeated Susan Wright, whose husband, Ron Wright, died in February about two weeks after testing positive for the coronavirus. The Associated Press called the race after Mr. Ellzey had obtained 52.9 percent of the vote with 90 percent of precincts reporting.“Jake will be a strong and effective leader for the people of North Texas and he will fight tirelessly for their values in Washington,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement.In May, Ms. Wright and Mr. Ellzey had each captured far below the 50 percent majority needed to avoid a runoff in a 23-way contest for the state’s Sixth Congressional District, which represents three counties just south of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan region.In the end, the runoff election, which drew far fewer voters than the primary contest, was less about two ideologically similar candidates and more about how much sway former President Donald J. Trump would have in getting people to cast ballots for Ms. Wright, whom he endorsed before the primary.In a duel of former Republican leaders, Rick Perry, the state’s former governor and a cabinet member of Mr. Trump’s administration, threw his weight behind Mr. Ellzey, who like Mr. Perry is a former military pilot.The contest between Ms. Wright and Mr. Ellzey, who overtook a Democratic candidate by 347 votes to secure a slot in the runoff, disappointed Democrats, who had hoped to tap a reservoir of shifting demographics and Hispanic and African American growth in a district where Mr. Trump won by only three percentage points in November.Susan Wright greeted voters last week outside an early voting site in Arlington, Texas.Elias Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News, via Associated PressMr. Ellzey, 51, a Navy veteran, is in the middle of his first term in the Texas House of Representatives. Ms. Wright, 58, is a longtime Republican activist who pledged to continue her husband’s legacy on a host of conservative priorities, including abortion, guns and immigration.Both candidates supported the Republican-backed voter overhaul legislation in Texas, a measure that prompted Democrats to leave the state to block a vote just days into a special session. Now Mr. Ellzey will join the second-largest congressional delegation — 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats — in the U.S. House behind California.The so-called Trump Factor was the biggest subplot in Tuesday’s contest, with Ms. Wright and her supporters hoping the endorsement would propel her to victory. The former president retains an immense hold on Texas Republicans, and he carried the district by 12 points in 2016 before losing ground in the region to Joseph R. Biden Jr. last year.Ms. Wright, who entered the contest two weeks after her husband’s death, had prominently displayed the former president’s endorsement throughout her campaign and introduced Mr. Trump at a virtual election-eve rally on Monday night.The Club for Growth, a conservative fiscal organization that supported Mr. Trump in 2020, has also aligned with Ms. Wright, spending $1.2 million to fund ads and mailings attacking Mr. Ellzey’s legislative record and his conservative credentials, prompting fierce rebuttals.Although the two candidates share similar views on most of the base issues, the Club for Growth attacks injected a harsh tenor into the race, becoming an issue themselves. Mr. Perry, the former governor, described them as “junk” and “absolute trash” and demanded that Ms. Wright disavow the claims, which she refused to do.Joe Barton, who represented the district in Congress for more than three decades, said the tone of the Club for Growth ads was a factor in his decision to endorse Mr. Ellzey, though he was friends with the Wrights.Heading into Tuesday’s race, Mr. Ellzey had raised $1.7 million, far more than the $740,000 raised by Ms. Wright, according to news media reports. More

The move could mean that the Justice Department is also unlikely to defend former President Donald J. Trump in the case.WASHINGTON — The Justice Department declined on Tuesday to defend a congressional ally of former President Donald J. Trump in a lawsuit accusing them both of inciting supporters at a rally in the hours before the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.Law enforcement officials determined that Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, was acting outside the scope of his duties in an incendiary speech just before the attack, according to a court filing. Mr. Brooks had asked the department to certify that he was acting as a government employee during the rally; had it agreed to defend him, he would have been dismissed from the lawsuit and the United States substituted as a defendant.“The record indicates that Brooks’s appearance at the Jan. 6 rally was campaign activity, and it is no part of the business of the United States to pick sides among candidates in federal elections,” the Justice Department wrote.“Members of Congress are subject to a host of restrictions that carefully distinguish between their official functions, on the one hand, and campaign functions, on the other.”The Justice Department’s decision shows it is likely to also decline to provide legal protection for Mr. Trump in the lawsuit. Legal experts have closely watched the case because the Biden Justice Department has continued to fight for granting immunity to Mr. Trump in a 2019 defamation lawsuit where he denied allegations that he raped the writer E. Jean Carroll and said she accused him to get attention.Such a substitution provides broad protections for government officials and is generally reserved for government employees sued over actions that stem from their work. In the Carroll case, the department cited other defamation lawsuits as precedent.The Brooks decision also ran counter to the Justice Department’s longstanding broad view of actions taken in the scope of a federal employee’s employment, which has served to make it harder to use the courts to hold government employees accountable for wrongdoing.Mr. Brooks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Lawyers for the House also said on Tuesday that they declined to defend Mr. Brooks in the lawsuit. Given that it “does not challenge any institutional action of the House,” a House lawyer wrote in a court filing, “it is not appropriate for it to participate in the litigation.”The Justice Department and House filed their briefs on Tuesday, the deadline set by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. The lawsuit, filed in March by Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, accuses Mr. Brooks of inciting a riot and conspiring to prevent a person from holding office or performing official duties.Mr. Swalwell accused Mr. Brooks, Mr. Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and his onetime personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani of playing a key role in inciting the Jan 6. attack during a rally near the White House in the hours before the storming of the Capitol.Citing excerpts from their speeches, Mr. Swalwell accused the men of violating federal law by conspiring to prevent an elected official from holding office or from performing official duties, arguing that their speeches led Mr. Trump’s supporters to believe they were acting on orders to attack the Capitol.Mr. Swalwell alleged that their speeches encouraged Mr. Trump’s supporters to unlawfully force members of Congress from their chambers and destroy parts of the Capitol to keep lawmakers from performing their duties.During the rally, Mr. Brooks told attendees that the United States was “at risk unlike it has been in decades, and perhaps centuries.” He said that their ancestors “sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes and sometimes their lives” for the country.“Are you willing to do the same?” he asked the crowd. “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?”Mr. Swalwell said defendants in his lawsuit had incited the mob and had continued to stoke false beliefs that the election was stolen.“As a direct and foreseeable consequence of the defendants’ false and incendiary allegations of fraud and theft, and in direct response to the defendants’ express calls for violence at the rally, a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol,” Mr. Swalwell said in his complaint. “Many participants in the attack have since revealed that they were acting on what they believed to be former President Trump’s orders in service of their country.”In June, Mr. Brooks asked that the Justice Department defend him in the case. He cited the Westfall Act, which essentially substitutes the Justice Department as the defendant when federal employees are sued for actions deemed within the scope of their employment, according to a court document.He described his speech on Jan. 6 as part of his job, saying that his duties include delivering speeches, making pronouncements on policy and persuading lawmakers.The Justice Department rejected that assertion.“Inciting or conspiring to foment a violent attack on the United States Congress is not within the scope of employment of a representative — or any federal employee — and thus is not the sort of conduct for which the United States is properly substituted as a defendant under the Westfall Act,” the department wrote. “Brooks does not argue otherwise. Instead, he denies the complaint’s allegations that he conspired to incite the attack on the Capitol.”Mr. Trump has not sought to have the government substitute for him as a defendant in the lawsuit under the Westfall Act. But he has argued in court filings that the statements he made on Jan. 6 are covered by broad immunity, that he could not be sued for making them and that the lawsuit violated his free speech rights.Should a judge deny Mr. Trump’s claims, he could ask the Justice Department to intervene on his behalf. But its decision in Mr. Brooks’s case lowered the chances that it would comply. More

Trump pint glasses. Trump T-shirts. Trump memberships. Six months after the former president left office, his party’s fund-raising success depends heavily on his vaunted name.Even in defeat, nothing sells in the Republican Party quite like Donald J. Trump.The Republican National Committee has been dangling a “Trump Life Membership” to entice small contributors to give online. The party’s Senate campaign arm has been hawking an “Official Trump Majority Membership.” And the committee devoted to winning back the House has been touting Mr. Trump’s nearly every public utterance, talking up a nonexistent Trump social media network and urging donations to “retake Trump’s Majority.”Six months after Mr. Trump left office, the key to online fund-raising success for the Republican Party in 2021 can largely be summed up in the three words it used to identify the sender of a recent email solicitation: “Trump! Trump! Trump!”The fund-raising language of party committees is among the most finely tuned messaging in politics, with every word designed to motivate more people to give more money online. And all that testing has yielded Trump-themed gimmicks and giveaways including Trump pint glasses, Trump-signed pictures, Trump event tickets and Trump T-shirts — just from the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the month of July.“The Republican Party has never had small-dollar fund-raising at this scale before Donald Trump,” said Brad Parscale, who was Mr. Trump’s first campaign manager in 2020 and is still an adviser, “and they probably never will at this scale after Donald Trump.”The strategy is clearly paying financial dividends, as three main G.O.P. federal committees raised a combined $134.8 million from direct individual contributions in the first six months of 2021, nearly matching the $136.2 million raised by the equivalent Democratic committees, federal records show.But the endless invocations of the former president underscore not only his enduring appeal to online Republican activists and donors — the base of the party’s base and its financial engine — but also the unlikelihood that the G.O.P. apparatus wants to, or even can, meaningfully break from him for the foreseeable future.The stark reliance on Mr. Trump’s name to spur small donations amounts to a tangible expression of the party’s inescapable dependency on him — one that risks preventing a reckoning over the losses the G.O.P. suffered in the last four years, including Mr. Trump’s own, which he has denied by clinging to false theories of election fraud.In July, the Trump-themed gimmicks and giveaways included pint glasses, signed pictures, event tickets and T-shirts.National Republican Senatorial CommitteeRepublican strategists said the party’s messaging and the influx of money reflect Mr. Trump’s continued hold on the hearts and wallets of the grass-roots, despite the party losing the House, the Senate and the White House in his single term.“The governing class of the Republican Party would just as well see him move on,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist and former top political adviser for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “It’s been ‘enough is enough.’ But he still keeps a firm grip on the grass-roots.”With Democrats in full control of Washington, some Republicans are hoping their party can rally chiefly against President Biden and the Democrats in the 2022 midterms. Yet Mr. Biden’s name has been as absent from the G.O.P. pleas for cash as Mr. Trump has been pervasive, a warning sign that Republicans are struggling to stir the kind of impassioned opposition to him that they had once generated to former President Barack Obama, and that Democrats had uniting their party against Mr. Trump four years ago.Since May 1, the Republicans’ Senate campaign arm has invoked Mr. Biden’s name in the sender line on its emails just four times; Mr. Trump’s name has appeared there 185 times.The Republican National Committee treated Mr. Trump’s June 14 birthday almost like a national holiday, sending out no less than 19 emails about it, starting more than five weeks in advance. The House campaign arm joined in, too: “Why haven’t you signed Trump’s Bday Card?!” read one text message. “We’ve texted 6x & it’s only 5 days away!”The heavy use of Mr. Trump’s name has at times been a source of friction with the former president, who has begun ramping up fund-raising for his own political action committee, called Save America. As a businessman, Mr. Trump spent years leveraging and licensing his name for cash, slapping it on buildings and products, and he and some of his advisers have been irked by the exploitation of his image by party committees that do not always align with his political interests.In March, his lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the three main Republican committees demanding they stop using his name and likeness. But back-channel discussions defused the situation as party officials insisted they had every right to refer to him but promised not to use his signature without permission. Still, some party committees continue to push the limits by wording messages to appear as though they are coming from Mr. Trump.Current and past party operatives said Mr. Trump’s name simply raises the most money. Every click and contribution is carefully cataloged, and committees can compare how much is raised using different messages and messengers. Those with Mr. Trump’s name simply outperform, operatives said.“President Trump and his policies remain a major driver for small-dollar donors,” said Michael McAdams, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.During one stretch in June, roughly 90 percent of that committee’s fund-raising texts mentioned Mr. Trump. Some solicitations have appealed to supporters’ love of Mr. Trump; others have tapped into their fear of disappointing him.At one point this spring, the committee warned donors against opting out of recurring monthly contributions through a prechecked box: “If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”Fund-raising text messages from the National Republican Congressional CommitteeIn a late 2020 memo, WinRed, the party’s main online donation-processing platform, said that donation pages that mentioned the word “Trump” reaped, on average, twice as many donors as pages that did not. WinRed still gives Mr. Trump top billing on its home page, featuring him above the actual party committees. Mr. Trump also continues to be featured prominently in many Democratic fund-raising pitches.While former presidents do typically maintain a following among the grass-roots — Mr. Obama is still featured on the donation pages of some Democratic Party groups — Mr. Trump is uniquely omnipresent in the Republican digital ecosystem.Tim Cameron, a Republican digital strategist, said one reason is that much of the Republican online donating infrastructure sprang up during the Trump era — after years of neglect and being outraised by the Democrats. “It’s how these lists were built,” he said.Hogan Gidley, who worked as an adviser to Mr. Trump at the White House, said the party — which still is populated by vestiges of a Trump-skeptical establishment that sees his incendiary approach to politics as a poor fit for swing districts and states — risks backlash and anger if it uses the Trump brand to bankroll causes and candidates not aligned with the pro-Trump movement.“This is where the party is,” Mr. Gidley said. “You can ride that wave or you can try to swim against it but the wave is going to win.”Mr. Trump and the party are sometimes directly at odds.The party’s Senate campaign arm, for instance, is supporting the re-election of Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who voted to convict Mr. Trump of impeachable offenses. Mr. Trump is supporting her challenger, Kelly Tshibaka. Mr. Trump has also regularly attacked Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, including in a speech to party donors this spring, calling him a “stone cold loser.”Mr. McConnell has ignored the slights. The online store of the party committee charged with returning Mr. McConnell to the majority currently has 21 of 23 items for sale featuring Mr. Trump’s name or face; zero feature Mr. McConnell. Mr. Trump has regularly attacked Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe party’s Senate committee has also hired Gary Coby, the architect of Mr. Trump’s 2020 digital operation who continues to work with Mr. Trump, as a fund-raising consultant, according to people familiar with the matter.Mr. Trump has begun ramping up his fund-raising operation, sending regular texts and emails that effectively compete with the party apparatus. Mr. Trump’s PAC is back advertising on Facebook, too, even as the platform has banned Mr. Trump from posting there himself.Of the all party organizations, the Republican National Committee has perhaps the trickiest line to toe because it is charged with neutrally overseeing the 2024 presidential nomination process, whether or not Mr. Trump runs.The R.N.C. worked in tandem with the Trump re-election campaign last year, raising hundreds of millions of dollars through shared accounts. A New York Times investigation in April showed how the Trump operation had used prechecked recurring donation boxes to lure unwitting donors into giving again and again — resulting in a wave of fraud complaints and demands for refunds.It turns out that some donations-on-autopilot continued all the way through June 2021, when party officials stopped processing donations to their shared account, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee. That account raised $2.6 million in June almost entirely through recurring donations, according to a person familiar with the matter, of which 75 percent was earmarked for Mr. Trump’s PAC and 25 percent to the R.N.C.But though those donations were stopped, the Trump messaging has continued, with the party hawking “Back to Back Trump Voter” shirts in recent days — yours “FREE” with a $50 donation.“He’s so good for small-dollar fund-raising,” said Liz Mair, a Republican strategist who has been critical of Mr. Trump in the past. “The party cannot financially afford to separate.” More

Am I too panicked about the future of American democracy?My colleague Ross Douthat thinks so. He points to research suggesting that voter ID laws and absentee voting have modest effects on elections and the reality that Republican state officials already have tremendous power to alter election outcomes — powers they did not use in the aftermath of 2020 and show few signs of preparing to use now.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]So I invited Ross on the show to hash it out: Am I too alarmed, or is he too chill? We also talk about his trio of recent columns trying to find a middle ground in the fight over how America understands, and teaches, its own history, as well as how his medical struggles with treatment-resistant Lyme disease have shaped how he’s understood and covered the coronavirus.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.(A full transcript of the episode is available here.)The New York Times“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin. More

Key events

Show

11.13am EDT
11:13

CDC to recommend vaccinated people wear masks indoors – sometimes

10.15am EDT
10:15

‘This is how I’m going to die’: USCP officer recounts January 6

9.56am EDT
09:56

Committee must uncover what happened at the White House on January 6, Cheney says

9.48am EDT
09:48

Thompson plays graphic footage of insurrection in opening statement

9.32am EDT
09:32

January 6 select committee begins first hearing

9.13am EDT
09:13

January 6 select committee to hold first hearing

Live feed

Show

11.21am EDT
11:21

Thompson is using his questions to hit key emotional points in the testimony of the four officers. Such committee hearings are about TV too, remember – which is why Donald Trump may be unhappy that thanks to Kevin McCarthy’s choice to withdraw Republicans from the panel, he has no defenders here, beaming to screens around the country.
Officer Dunn is asked about his experience enduring racist abuse, seeing Confederate flags among the rioters and other such issues.
“It’s so overwhelming and disappointing and disheartening,” he says, that America contains people who would “attack you because of the colour of your skin”.
“My blood is red, I’m an American citizen, I’m a police officer and a peace officer,” he says. “I’m here to defend everybody.”
Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and pariah in her own party, is next up. She asks Sgt Gonell about Trump’s claims that the crowd was full of “loving” people. He is not impressed.
“I’m still recovering from those hugs and kisses,” Gonell says, adding: “If that was hugs and kisses I wish you all go to his house and do the same to him.”
“All of them were telling us Trump sent us,” Gonell adds, dismissing Trump’s claim leftwing demonstrators or the FBI were behind the riot.
Officer Fanone is next to receive a question from Cheney. “The politics of that day didn’t play into my response at all,” he says.
Officer Hodges is asked to describe his experience in seeing protesters in military and tactical gear at the Capitol. Cheney asks Officer Dunn about what police expected on 6 January. “A couple arrests, name-calling, unfriendly people,” he says – but not close to what actually happened.

11.13am EDT
11:13

CDC to recommend vaccinated people wear masks indoors – sometimes

The Washington Post reports that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will this afternoon recommend that vaccinated people wear masks indoors in certain circumstances. The paper, which tends to turn out to be reasonably well connected in the capital, says the announcement is coming at 3pm ET.
The CDC will revise guidance issued on 13 May, which said vaccinated individuals did not need to wear masks indoors.
As is the way of things, the administration’s view on whether mask advisories or mandates might return, as with the question of whether vaccinations should be made mandatory in any circumstances, has been a little opaque. But as press secretary Jen Psaki said yesterday, Joe Biden regards his scientific and medical advisers as his “North Star” on such matters, so here we are. Or will be, when the announcement comes later.
The highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus has fuelled steep rises in case numbers, particularly among unvaccinated Americans and amid struggles with disinformation and resistance, particularly on the political right.
Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, discussed the possible need to return to advising mask-wearing over the weekend. Report here.
Speaking to the Post, Robert Wachter, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said: “Nobody wants to go backward but you have to deal with the facts on the ground, and the facts on the ground are that it’s a pretty scary time and there are a lot of vulnerable people.
“I think the biggest thing we got wrong was not anticipating that 30% of the country would choose not to be vaccinated.
“In June we were in this virtuous cycle, where cases were going down, people were getting vaccinated, everyone said happy days are here again, and let their guard down.”
Some further reading, from Jessica Glenza:

11.10am EDT
11:10

This is Martin Pengelly, taking over the controls from Joanie Greve for a while. In response to questions from Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, Sgt Gonell is currently describing his experiences in Iraq: “We could run over an IED and that’s it but at least we knew we were in a combat zone. Here, in our nation’s capital, we were attacked multiple times.”
He adds that police officers were “fighting for our lives” during the assault by the Trump supporters seeking to overturn the election result.

Updated
at 11.10am EDT

11.04am EDT
11:04

US Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who is Black, said he was repeatedly called the “n” word as he sought to protect the Capitol from pro-Trump insurrectionists on January 6.
“Nobody had ever, ever called me a [‘n’ word] while wearing the uniform of a Capitol Police officer,” Dunn said, actually saying the racial slur.
Dunn closed his testimony by expressing pride in his fellow USCP officers and encouraging them to protect their mental health as they deal with the fallout of the insurrection.
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking professional counseling,” Dunn said.

Updated
at 11.04am EDT

10.50am EDT
10:50

US Capitol Police officers are closely watching the January 6 select committee’s hearing as some of their colleagues testify.
An NBC News reporter shared a photo of two USCP officers watching C-SPAN as it streamed the hearing:

Haley Talbot
(@haleytalbotnbc)
As we hear the powerful stories from officers on Jan 6 can’t help but think of the entire USCP force, including those that lost their lives as a result of that day. As you walk around the Capitol today officers are glued to the hearing, watching their colleagues testify. pic.twitter.com/ljw2Br7tk3

July 27, 2021

10.42am EDT
10:42

Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges, who was nearly crushed against a door on January 6 as pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, delivered his opening statement to the select committee. More

On Jan. 6, hundreds of our fellow citizens stormed the U.S. Capitol, armed and ready for battle. For hours, broadcast live on television and streamed on social media, rioters attacked law enforcement and eventually breached the halls of Congress in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election.Their goal was to subvert America’s democratic process — and their means to this end was brute force and violent assaults on the men and women of the Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department.How did this happen? Why? Who spurred this effort? Was it organized? When did our government leaders know of the impending attacks and what were their responses? What level of preparation or warnings did our law enforcement have? Was there coordination between the rioters and any members of Congress, or with staff?We need answers and we need accountability, and the only way to get that is a full investigation and understanding of what happened to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. Such an investigation should include a serious look at the misinformation campaigns and their origins, the lies being perpetuated by leaders — including by former President Donald Trump — and what impact such false narratives had on the events leading up to and following Jan. 6. We need to be fearless about understanding the motivations of our fellow Americans, even if it makes us uncomfortable about the truth of who they are and the truth of who played what role in inspiring them.I’ve never been pessimistic about the future of this country, but if we fail to do this — and do this right — I will have serious doubts about what the future looks like for America and for our democracy. Self-governance requires accountability and responsibility, and it’s why I accepted Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s appointment to serve on the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which is holding its first hearing on Tuesday.I’m a Republican dedicated to conservative values, but I swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution — and while this is not the position I expected to be in or sought out, when duty calls, I will always answer.This moment is bigger than me — it’s bigger than all of us because the future of our country is on the line. This is not about politics: For my part, my wife Sofia and I are expecting a baby boy early next year, and I have to make sure the future is a better one for him — that the America he’ll be born into is better than what we are facing right now. That facts will be the facts, and truth will prevail over the lies and conspiracies.The oath many of us take to uphold our Constitution and defend democracy means something. I’ve taken this oath in my capacity as a member of Congress and in my service in the U.S. Air Force, and Air National Guard. And I’m committed to upholding my oath by serving on this committee to ensure we have accountability and transparency about the Jan. 6 insurrection.In that spirit, I believe that all of us who have taken oaths to defend our Constitution must play a role in this inquiry if called upon. This includes members of Congress, military leaders, White House officials and key players in our intelligence field, among others.Without question, the work of this committee needs to be a nonpartisan effort. It cannot continue to be a partisan fight, where we’re taking every opportunity to discredit each other for perceived political points or fund-raising efforts. The childish mudslinging is not helpful and damages the already fragile integrity of our institutions. I urge all of my colleagues — as well as the American people — to unplug the rage machine and see this situation through clear eyes: America was attacked, and we deserve to know why and how it happened.We need to restore some trust in this country, and that requires a full investigation of what happened and how the insurrection was able to take place. That’s the goal. We need the facts — and we need to lay them out for the country to see for themselves and face them head on. In order to heal from the damage caused that day, we must acknowledge and understand what happened, hold the responsible people accountable, learn from our past mistakes and move on — stronger and secured in knowing that we as a nation will never let this happen again.Adam Kinzinger is a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Illinois and a member of the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.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