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In easier times, the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal church would be crowded, especially on the Sunday morning before a presidential inauguration a few blocks away.In the midst of a pandemic and a security lockdown following the assault on the Capitol, the street outside was almost deserted. Metropolitan AME, one of the city’s oldest Black American churches, has already been vandalised by the white supremacist Proud Boys, while “liberal” churches have been warned they could be targets once more in the days before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take office, and the Donald Trump era ends.“You couldn’t imagine this happening in the United States, for the seat of power to have been overtaken like that,” said Angela Walker, a 63-year-old congregant who had come to work in the church kitchen. “It’s just sad.”Metropolitan AME was one of many churches targeted by a Proud Boys mob in December, when they rampaged through town, destroying Black Lives Matter (BLM) signs and looking for people to fight.Enrique Tarrio, the group’s leader who has been charged over the attack, told USA Today his group was not mobilizing as part of inauguration protests, saying: “I feel like this part of the battle is over.”Walker said: “They were here and they have done a lot of damage.” But she quickly added she was unafraid. “I pray that it stops now. I actually truly believe that they will not hit any of the churches again, not here in this city.”She said her conviction was rooted in her faith but also in the presence of thousands of national guard troops. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks there were US warplanes in the air but fewer soldiers on the ground. Less of Washington was locked down.Blocks to the south of the church were blocked off by the national guard detachments with armoured cars, guarding “green” and “red” zones, an echo of the fortified area of central Baghdad that was part of America’s ill-fated war on terror. The presence of a military garrison in Washington, on a scale not witnessed since the civil war, was a reminder that endemic racism remains a greater menace to national security than any external threat.“We have more troops in Washington than we do in Afghanistan right now and they’re here to protect us from our own president and his mob,” Seth Moulton, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, told the Guardian.The Marine Corps combat veteran said the images from the Capitol this week were “shocking”.“I expected this in Baghdad,” he said. “I never imagined this in Washington.”The area around Metropolitan AME was held by the Pennsylvania national guard, posted at junctions, assault rifles hanging from their body armour.“I never thought in a million years that I would be on patrol in the streets of DC,” said one sergeant who said his unit was deployed in Iraq just before he joined up and last year went on military exercises in North Macedonia, codenamed Decisive Strike, meant to prepare them to meet foreign adversaries.The sergeant hoped the current deployment, defending the seat of government against his fellow countrymen, would go down in history as an aberration.“We’ve been through worse before and got through it,” he said. “Hopefully we can soon all go home.”Thomas Porter, vice-president for government affairs at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an advocacy group, said: “To many veterans, they’re going to recall the vivid images of their experiences in Baghdad.”The invasion of the halls of Congress, and the knowledge some veterans were part of the mob, has left many veterans angry, Porter said.“We would compare ourselves to countries overseas and we could always depend on a democratic and peaceful transfer of power,” Porter said. “The whole attack on the Capitol was an affront to that.”The heavy military presence represented the closing of a very large stable door after the horse had bolted. The show of force which confronted BLM protests in the summer was glaringly absent when Trump loyalists ransacked the Capitol on 6 January.On Sunday, at BLM Plaza in front of the White House, a few demonstrators talked to journalists near a sign warning: “Domestic terrorists not welcome.”Jade Olivo, 31, had come from New York to demonstrate for Black trans lives. The presence of so many troops in the city was “nerve-racking”, she said. She planned to stay in Washington through inauguration but said she had no idea what the next days might bring.A few blocks to the north, two Washingtonians had paused on a street corner to discuss the strange atmosphere in their city.Emily Turner, 24, had spent part of Saturday walking around the fortified perimeter around Capitol Hill.“I’ve never seen so many guns in my life,” she said.Inauguration is supposed to be a celebratory event, she said, but there was “not so much celebrating going on anywhere”.“It’s just eerie,” said Andy Smith, 33. “I hope it’s not the future of every major event in DC.The militarisation of the Capitol and the shutdowns of businesses, streets and public transportation has had a disproportionate effect on homeless residents of Washington, said Shannon Clark, 27, an organizer with Remora House, a small mutual aid group that distributes supplies. There are small tent encampments throughout downtown, some in close proximity to the Capitol and the White House.“In effect, folks are largely trapped down there,” Clark said. “It’s going to be very difficult for them to get out.”Reports that far-right groups have harassed and targeted unhoused people in the past has only increased concerns, Clark said.On Saturday, Remora House distributed dozens of Metro cards loaded with $10, along with instructions on how to access shelters and stations still open.“People here are hungry,” the group tweeted. “Cold. And scared. People want out.” More

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyRaphael Warnock and the Legacy of Racial TyrannyHis victory in the Georgia Senate runoff made history, and also echoed it.Mr. Wegman is a member of the editorial board.Jan. 17, 2021Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesLost in the horror and mayhem of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was another momentous event that happened barely 12 hours earlier and hundreds of miles away: the election to the Senate of the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, the first Black Democratic senator from the South in the nation’s history.Mr. Warnock’s triumph, along with that of Jon Ossoff, who won the other Georgia runoff on that Tuesday night, gave Democrats the Senate majority they lost in 2014, and full control of Congress for the first time in a decade.That was the salient political fact, at least before the insurrection began. But the proximity of those two events — the election of a Black man to the Senate followed hard on by the violent ransacking of the Capitol by an overwhelmingly white mob — rang loudly with echoes of the past.A little more than 150 years ago, on the afternoon of Feb. 25, 1870, America’s first Black senator, Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, sat on the floor of the Senate preparing to take his oath of office.“There was not an inch of standing or sitting room in the galleries, so densely were they packed,” this newspaper reported in the following day’s edition. “To say that the interest was intense gives but a faint idea of the feeling which prevailed throughout the entire proceeding.”Hiram Rhodes RevelsCredit…Library of CongressRevels was, like Mr. Warnock, a preacher, ordained by the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He had been raised in North Carolina and served as a chaplain to a Black regiment during the Civil War. He was elected to the Mississippi State Senate in 1869, part of a wave of Black lawmakers who took office throughout the South during Reconstruction.In 1870, the State Legislature chose Revels to fill one of Mississippi’s two U.S. Senate seats, both of which had been abandoned several years earlier, when the state seceded. It was a bold and unapologetic statement that Black Americans — Black men, anyway — were the political equals of whites, and were entitled to hold office alongside them.But the wounds of the Civil War were still fresh, and Southern whites were furious at being forced to share power with the people they had so recently enslaved. Before Revels could raise his right hand, the objections began raining down. George Vickers, a Democrat from Maryland, argued that Revels was ineligible to serve because the Constitution requires a senator to have been an American citizen for at least nine years. According to the Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, Black people could never be citizens. While the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, effectively negated that ruling, Vickers contended — with a dose of birtherism that would make Donald Trump proud — Revels had therefore only been a citizen for two years.Revels’s backers argued that he was in fact a lifelong citizen of the United States, because he was born to free Black parents.After more objections and heated debate, the efforts to block Revels’s admission were voted down by the antislavery Republicans who dominated the Senate. “When the Vice-President uttered the words, ‘The Senator elect will now advance and take the oath,’ a pin might have been heard drop,” The Times wrote. “Mr. Revels showed no embarrassment whatever, and his demeanor was as dignified as could be expected under the circumstances. The abuse which had been poured upon him and on his race during the last two days might well have shaken the nerves of any one.”Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts spoke up in Mr. Revels’s defense. “All men are created equal, says the great Declaration,” he said, but “the Declaration was only half established by Independence. The greatest duty remained behind. In assuring the equal rights of all we complete the work.”The rioters incited by President Trump and Republicans to storm the seat of the federal government on Jan. 6 did not have Mr. Warnock’s name on their lips. They didn’t have to. In their eagerness to destroy American democracy rather than share it, they showed themselves to be the inheritors of a long tradition of rebellion against a new world order: a genuine, multiracial democracy.Reconstruction was the first attempt to make that world order a reality, and it succeeded remarkably for a few years, as evidenced by the election of leaders like Hiram Revels. But it soon collapsed as the federal government gave up and pulled troops out of the South, leaving Black people at the mercy of vengeful state governments intent on re-establishing white supremacy.In the Jim Crow era that followed, millions of Black Americans were erased from American political life. They may have technically counted as five-fifths of a person, rather than three-fifths as the Constitution had originally set out, but they were no more able to participate in their own governance than their enslaved forebears had been. Those who tried to take part faced everything from poll taxes and literacy tests to campaigns of terrorism and state-sanctioned murder. By the first decades of the 20th century, Black voter registration had fallen into the low single digits across much of the South.That racist, anti-democratic regime was brought down only by the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, led at its apex by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Historians often refer to this time as a second Reconstruction, because it wasn’t until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the United States could claim to be anything resembling a true representative democracy. But this second Reconstruction, like the first, faced reactionary backlash from the start. That backlash has found expression primarily in the Republican Party, which had by then abandoned its abolitionist roots — from Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy to Ronald Reagan’s race-baiting dog whistles to the openly racist campaign and presidency of Donald Trump.If Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016, following the eight-year tenure of the nation’s first Black president, was a symbolic assault on the ideal of a multiracial democracy, the riot he incited at the Capitol on Jan. 6 made that assault literal.There will be no new Jim Crow regime, but the effort to preserve white political domination continues. Republican lawmakers have been working for years to make it harder, if not impossible, for Black voters — who vote roughly 9 to 1 for Democrats — to register and cast their ballots. While no state caved to the outrageous pressure from Mr. Trump to reject its popular vote in favor of Joe Biden and give its electors to him, many states are already debating legislation to cut back access to voting and to strengthen voter ID requirements, both of which would hurt Black voters disproportionately.Those voters were critical to the Democrats’ victories in Georgia, and their showing up despite the obstacles placed in their way has ensured that Mr. Warnock and Mr. Ossoff will be sworn in over the coming days. But it is clearer than ever that as America approaches 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s work of assuring equal rights for all is far from complete. As in 1870, the greatest duty still remains before us.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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentliveLatest UpdatesTrump ImpeachedHow the House VotedRepublican SupportKey QuotesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyKevin McCarthy Finds That Charm Has Its LimitsMany people will not forgive the Republican House leader’s blatant acts to embrace and perpetuate dangerous lies that threatened democracy.Contributing Opinion WriterJan. 17, 2021, 11:00 a.m. ETCredit…Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesLOS ANGELES — Here is the important thing to understand about Kevin McCarthy: He has risen from college dropout to the highest rungs of political leadership by being the guy everyone liked. You can’t have too many friends, he likes to say. He was the guy with the pool table in the house he shared with legislators in Sacramento; the guy who slept on the sofa in his congressional office, went mountain biking with colleagues in the morning and hosted movie nights with Chick-fil-A; the guy who could deliver votes and raise money. Everyone, it seemed, liked the California Republican whom President Trump called “my Kevin.”Until now. Now he is not just disliked, but reviled. No matter how Mr. McCarthy, the House minority leader, tries to finesse the attacks on the 2020 election and the U.S. Capitol, many people — including former friends — will not forgive his blatant acts to embrace and perpetuate dangerous lies that threatened democracy, and lives.Former U.S. Representative Bill Thomas of California denounced his protégé as a hypocrite. The Sacramento Bee called Mr. McCarthy “a soulless anti-democracy conspirator.” In an emotional video, Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose 2006 election marked the last time a Republican was elected statewide in California, took aim at “spineless” Republican elected officials who acted as enablers for the president’s lies. “They are complicit with those who carried the flag of self-righteous insurrection into the Capitol,” the former governor said. “We need public servants that serve something larger than their own power or their own party.”Hope springs eternal, but no one really expected Mr. McCarthy to rise to the occasion this week; that would have meant breaking with the friends who had gotten him this far. As colleagues faced death threats, Mr. McCarthy could bring himself only to exhort his caucus not to publicly chastise Republicans who supported impeachment because it might endanger their safety. After months of repeating Republican lies that sowed doubt about the legitimacy of the election, Mr. McCarthy acknowledged the obvious — that Mr. Biden had won the fair election — but not before voting against certification of the outcome. And finally, after a week in which many major corporate donors threatened to withhold donations to Republicans who objected to certifying the election results, Mr. McCarthy admitted that the president “bears responsibility” for the attack on the Capitol — and then voted against his impeachment for that egregious act.Mr. McCarthy sees himself as a leader who acts as a thermostat — setting a temperature and then moving his caucus to reach that degree. He has chosen a scalding temperature that requires little adjustment for a majority of his caucus but scorches an overheated country, threatening the institutions of our democracy. Perhaps this weak leadership will someday still serve his ambition to represent the majority in the House as speaker — or perhaps Mr. McCarthy has wound up being liked by people who represent the political past.Mr. McCarthy didn’t set out in his political career as an ideological firebrand — quite the opposite. His political origin story, which he tells often, began when the fourth-generation Bakersfield native won $5,000 in the lottery, dropped out of community college, opened a deli, discovered the frustrations of dealing with government regulation, sold the deli, went back to school and, in 1987, began to work for his local congressman, Mr. Thomas. In fact, the deli was a corner in his aunt and uncle’s frozen yogurt shop, which he neither owned nor sold. Still, he beat 40,000-to-1 odds to win the lottery.The lucky streak continued. In 2003, he became the first freshman assemblyman chosen as minority leader in Sacramento. He took care to call himself the Republican leader, not the minority leader. (He has done the same thing in Washington.) Mr. Thomas said his protégé combined ambition “with an incredible likability. People like to be around Kevin.” When Mr. Thomas retired in 2006, Mr. McCarthy easily won his U.S. House seat.He became known as a skilled political strategist and prolific fund-raiser whose charm earned him friends around the country. After the Freedom Caucus helped thwart his bid for speaker in 2015, he drifted steadily right. In 2016, he became an early supporter of Donald Trump and cultivated his new friend with trademark thoughtfulness. Learning that the president preferred two flavors of Starbursts, Mr. McCarthy had his staff pick out the cherry and strawberry flavors and fill a jar delivered as a gift.For a while after the election, it seemed his geniality might insulate him from some of the venom directed at colleagues in the Senate like Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley — even though he, too, defended Mr. Trump’s brazen efforts to overturn the election.“President Trump won this election, so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet,” Mr. McCarthy said on Fox News two days after the election. “We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-1sjr751{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1sjr751 a:hover{border-bottom:1px solid #dcdcdc;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cs27wo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cs27wo{padding:20px;}}.css-1cs27wo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}The Trump Impeachment ›From Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and at the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by Mr. Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.As the president grew increasingly unhinged, Mr. McCarthy remained faithful. He cynically talked of widespread fraud and signed the amicus brief in a meritless lawsuit that went to the Supreme Court. Even after reportedly pleading with the president to call off the mob that overran the Capitol, Mr. McCarthy voted that night to reject the certification of votes. “It was though they went to an extended lunch and came back and resumed their mission — reinforce, by your votes, the lies of the president,” a visibly irate Mr. Thomas said on TV last week.Such bona fides do not play well in most of California, where Mr. Trump carried only seven of the 53 congressional districts (Mr. McCarthy’s, still solidly Republican, was one of them). In recent years, as the president became increasingly toxic, many left the party. One who stayed was Joe Rodota, a veteran political strategist who had worked as a top adviser to two former governors, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Mr. Rodota didn’t want to be driven out by Mr. Trump. But after the attack on the Capitol, he went and changed his registration to independent. It was no longer about Mr. Trump; it was about the Republican Party, led by people like Mr. McCarthy. In purple Orange County, the number of registered Republicans dropped by around 3,000 in the 10 days after the attack.In Bakersfield, it is easy to find the legacy of Bill Thomas, called one of the smartest and meanest congressmen of his day: the bust at the entrance to the William M. Thomas Terminal at the Bakersfield airport, the William M. Thomas Planetarium, the Thomas Roads Improvement Program, all named after the man who directed hundreds of millions to local infrastructure.His protégé made up for his own lack of gravitas by winning popularity contests. In the end, that may be Mr. McCarthy’s only legacy. Colored Starbursts get you only so far. Perhaps someday there will be a plaque in front of the restaurant that now serves Rosa’s traditional Peruvian food, to mark the spot where Kevin O’s Deli was once a corner of a yogurt shop and a 1986 reviewer said “the owner is a really friendly guy.”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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

Stepkids. Nieces. A doting husband. His ex-wife. What the Harris-Emhoffs can show the country. More

Sign up for the Guardian Today US newsletterWhen Alison Lopez discovered her uncle’s sister had been part of the mob that breached the Capitol doors on 6 January, she immediately reported her to the FBI. “I had no second thoughts,” she said.Lopez found out about her in-law’s participation when the woman in question called her aunt from inside the Capitol to brag about “taking back the election”. Lopez, who is 42, said she had known the relative her whole life but had “no qualms” about reporting her.“If I saw my grandmother making bombs in her basement, or my aunt breaking into a home, I would have to intervene as well – it’s just about doing what’s right,” she said.In the week after the attacks on the Capitol, there has been a concerted effort to “unmask” rioters online, with self-styled detectives investigating who’s who in videos and photos posted from the attack. Outing family members – either online or to authorities – has marked a new frontier of the rift Trumpism has created in the US.Lopez said she was horrified but not surprised to see a loved one participate in the riot. Over the last four years she has watched helplessly as members of her family became increasingly entrenched in the world of hateful rightwing conspiracy theories.“These are people who never really identified with politics before, and now they have just let this consume their lives,” Lopez said, adding she does not consider herself a Democrat and has voted for Republican candidates in the past.If I saw my grandmother making bombs in her basement … I would have to intervene as well – it’s about doing what’s rightMore than 140,000 people have sent tips to the FBI reporting participants in the riots on the Capitol on 6 January, resulting in at least 200 arrests. The vast majority of those, according to the Department of Justice, come from friends, family, and other acquaintances of those involved in the attacks.The Massachusetts teen Helena Duke received a flood of support this week when she posted a video outing her own mother, aunt and uncle as having attended the Capitol protests.The 18-year-old said her mother, who appears to be harassing a Black woman in the video shared, previously condemned her for attending Black Lives Matter protests. “If I did nothing, I felt I was as bad as them,” Duke told Good Morning America.The decision to report a family member or publicly out them as espousing dangerous views can make a huge impact in stopping the spread of hate speech, said Talia Lavin, an expert in extremism and white supremacist groups and the author of Culture Warlords.“I applaud the bravery of people who have called out people in their own families for this kind of radicalization,” she said. “When people experience ostracization or disavowal from one’s own family, it can lead to a kind of cooling of extremist sentiment, because individuals are for the very first time experiencing a consequence for what they have so proudly engaged in for so long.”Online sleuthing is not new, especially among hate speech and extremism investigators, who have for years hunted down and outed racists and fascist agitators to employers in hopes to foster accountability. But in the aftermath of the insurrection, the practice has gone more mainstream, with journalists, activists and the FBI tweeting out photos and videos of the riot and encouraging followers to investigate them.Online sleuthing has its drawbacks: a Chicago firefighter faced harassment after being falsely identified as the killer of a Capitol police officer through a blurry video image. Another photo was falsely traced to a man pictured on an Antifa website, a tie that has been definitively disproven.But the chance of mistaken identity is much lower when the accusation comes from a family member or loved one. Leslie, a woman in Chicago who asked that her last name not be used in this story, said she and her sister both submitted screenshots of images their mother posted on social media from the steps of the Capitol during the riots to the FBI.Leslie, who considers herself far left politically, said she had watched in horror as vigilantes stormed the Capitol on 6 January, only to learn days later her estranged mother was one of them.“I almost passed out,” she said of the moment she saw the images. “I was really shocked, she was on the scaffolding we saw people climbing on TV. It was such a helpless, horrifying feeling.”Leslie said she and her three siblings all stopped speaking to their parents after they got sucked into QAnon, movement surrounding a disproven conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is saving the world from a secret cabal of child abusers. She said she watched her evangelical mother go from being a devout Christian to posting hate speech on Facebook and aligning herself with the far right.“I am really, really angry that I have essentially lost my family to a cult,” she said. “I am angry that people were not taking the rise of QAnon more seriously. People kept saying, ‘nobody is actually going to do anything, it is just a bunch of idiots online’.”“Well, the people at the Capitol are the people who were looking at this online,” she said. “This is what happens when you don’t do anything.”Leslie is not alone: support groups have emerged in recent years for the countless Americans who have lost loved ones to the conspiracy theory.Leslie said she is hoping a call from the FBI could serve as “kind of wake up call for them”, she said.“Maybe if she gets a call from the authorities she will realize this is not just a game, this is not just something playing out on Facebook. This is real and people got killed,” she said. More

Far right “playbooks” teaching white nationalists how to recruit and radicalise Trump supporters have surfaced on the encrypted messaging app Telegram ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration.
The documents, seen by the Observer, detail how to convert mainstream conservatives who have just joined Telegram into violent white supremacists. They were found last week by Tech Against Terrorism, an initiative launched by the UN counter terrorism executive directorate.
Large numbers of Trump supporters migrated on to Telegram in recent days after Parler, the social media platform favoured by the far right, was forced offline for hosting threats of violence and racist slurs after the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.
The documents have prompted concern that far right extremists congregating on Telegram instead of Parler has made it far harder for law enforcement to track where the next attack could come from.
Already, hundreds of suspects threatening violence during this week’s inauguration of Biden have been identified by the FBI.
One of the playbooks, found on a channel with 6,000 subscribers, was specially drawn up to radicalise Trump supporters who had just joined Telegram and teach them “how to have the proper OPSEC [operations security] to keep your identity concealed”.
The four-page document encourages recruiters to avoid being overtly racist or antisemitic initially when approaching Trump supporters, stating: “Trying to show them racial IQ stats and facts on Jewish power will generally leave them unreceptive… that material will be instrumental later on in their ideological journey.
“The point of discussion you should focus on is the blatant anti-white agenda that is being aggressively pushed from every institution in the country, as well as white demographic decline and its consequences.”
The document concludes with its author stating: “Big Tech made a serious mistake by banishing conservatives to the one place [Telegram] where we have unfettered access to them, and that’s a mistake they’ll come to regret!”
The document is named the “comprehensive redpill guide”, a reference to the online term red-pilling, used to describe a conversion to extreme far-right views.
The document adds: “Not every normie can be redpilled, but if they’re receptive and open-minded to hearing what you have to say, you should gradually be sending them edgier pro-white/anti-Zionist content as they move along in their journey.”
Another white nationalist recruitment guide uncovered by Tech Against Terrorism, which is working with global tech firms to tackle terrorist use of the internet, shares seven steps of “conservative conversion”. More

The presidency of Donald Trump may be ending with both a bang and a whimper: one insurrection, two impeachments and no more characters on Twitter. But the legacy he leaves to American politics – and especially the Republican party – will not end neatly with the inauguration of his successor.That’s not just because Trump has toyed openly with the notion of running for president again in four years. Trump may or may not be able or willing to run for elected office again, if he survives his second impeachment trial and the multiple investigations into his business and tax affairs.Whether or not he stalks Washington on social media or television, Trump leaves the nation’s capital having cleaved his own party in two.On one side is the Trumpist base, willing to follow an autocratic leader wherever his whims lead: blowing up democratic and diplomatic norms, while stoking up racial and social divisions. On the other are establishment conservatives, committed to the institutions and culture that have served their traditional priorities: business, national security and suburban privilege.That schism was on display and on the record as 10 House Republicans – including Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican leader – voted for Trump’s impeachment this week, joining Democrats for the most bipartisan impeachment vote in American history. That left 197 Republicans voting to support Trump, reflecting the overwhelming sentiment of the party.According to recent polling by Quinnipiac University, Trump may have plunged to a new low of 33% in his approval ratings, but fully 71% of Republicans still think he’s doing a great job as president.Such numbers help explain the wobbling positions of Republican congressional leaders.Senator Mitch McConnell has let it be known that he welcomes Trump’s impeachment but has curiously not taken a position on convicting the outgoing president – except to delay his trial. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, voted against impeachment while also blaming Trump for inciting insurrection. They are ironically leading a party that once built an entire election campaign around attacking the Democrats for flip-flopping.These are not new divisions for the Republican party: their roots lie in past divisions like Pat Buchanan’s pitchfork rebellion, Ross Perot’s barn-cleaning reforms, Barry Goldwater’s embrace of extremism and Joe McCarthy’s red scare. But no other Republican president since Richard Nixon has left his party in such a conflicted state, and Nixon himself was ejected from the White House by an establishment led by Goldwater himself.Seasoned conservative intellectuals, operatives and analysts are frankly perplexed by what lies ahead.Pete Wehner, a veteran of three Republican administrations and senior fellow at the conservative Ethics & Public Policy Center, is a staunch Trump critic who does not see an immediate path beyond Trumpism.“It was confusing to me before this week and it’s probably more confusing to me after this week what the future of the Republican party is,” he said. “The reason I say that is because prior to this week, the populist, nihilistic Trumpist movement was in the stronger position. Now it’s in a weaker position, but it doesn’t mean it’s in a weak position.”Wehner says the party’s challenges go far beyond the current crop of Republicans in Congress.“For all of my criticism of Republican lawmakers – and I have had a lot – I have always believed that the fundamental problem isn’t them,” he said. “It’s the base of the party that is where the pathologies are. They are very attuned to what the base wants and what their constituents want. A lot of them were acting in ways that weren’t true to what they believed or their philosophy. They felt constrained and pressured and intimidated. They are scared of Trump supporters and don’t want to be defeated in primaries.”Since November, the dynamic has changed inside the Republican party but it’s not at all clear that the change is enough to move the party away from its obsession with Trump himself. For all the jockeying among Trump-like figures – such as senators Ted Cruz of Texas or Josh Hawley of Missouri – there may be no oxygen left after Trump consumes it all for the next four years. There may be even less oxygen for less toxic conservatives like Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump’s UN ambassador, or the Nebraska senator Ben Sasse.What’s the plan and who are the leaders to do that? There’s no clear answer as of right now“Before 6 January, there was a much more complex coalition of factions inside the Trump GOP,” says Kevin Madden, a former senior aide to Mitt Romney and congressional Republican leaders. “There was a variation of Trump supporters and skeptics who were at least united against what they believed were the excesses of the political left. That’s how he enjoyed a 90% approval rating.“After January 6, there was a shift and the fracture in the party is more obvious and out in the open. Now it’s a split between Republicans devoted to the rule of law and those who are devoted to Donald Trump above all else. It’s too early to tell how deep that fracture is and whether it can ever be repaired but, as of right now, those devoted to Donald Trump outnumber the others.”Madden is skeptical that anybody can challenge Trump’s hold on the party while he remains a vocal president-in-exile.“Anyone who believes that they can just draft behind him and build or maintain support with his base while Trump himself fades out is embarking on a fool’s errand,” he says. “This was the conceit of the entire 2016 field, thinking Trump was someone else’s fight. Trump has to be confronted, otherwise the party will look and sound like him for the next 15 years. That’s the question for the so-called establishment. What’s the plan and who are the leaders to do that? There’s no clear answer as of right now.”One clear sign of Trump’s domination is that there is no substantive debate about what amounts to Trump’s policy legacy.There is little dispute about the wisdom of Trump’s massive deficit spending, even as Republicans say they will reject deficit spending by the Biden administration. There is little soul-searching about the nativist anti-immigrant policies of the Trump years, including the forced separation of children at the border. And there’s almost no dispute about Trump’s catastrophic response to the pandemic – from his opposition to mask-wearing, to his failures of testing and tracing, to the botched rollout of mass vaccinations.“He hasn’t weakened the Republican party in all respects,” said Wehner. “It’s true that the Democrats have the Senate and the House and the presidency. There’s no question there’s been some cost. But there’s also no empirical doubt that Trump brought in new people and the party won down-ballot in ways that people didn’t foresee. I can’t say that Trump has been a catastrophe for the party when at the state level they are doing pretty well.”Still, Wehner believes that the best outcome for Republicans is an open dispute about its future: “In my view, a figurative civil war is better than the alternative, which is a massacre of the good guys. Our best hope is that there’s a fight for the soul of the party.”Could that dispute lead to a permanent rupture in the party? The United States has a poor track record with third parties, unlike European politics, where multi-party legislatures have long represented the status quo.Michael Barone, the co-author of The Almanac of American Politics and a conservative analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, has heard it all before. “In my 60-plus years of observing these things, I’ve seen numerous prophecies that the Republican party was going out of business, and none of those prophecies has yet come true,” he said “I suppose one will some day.” More