US Politics

Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez are among a host of celebrities set to perform at Joe Biden’s inauguration next week.Lady Gaga will sing the national anthem as the president-elect and vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris, are sworn in on the West Front of the US Capitol on 20 January, and Lopez is also expected to give a musical performance.Foo Fighters, John Legend and Bruce Springsteen will offer remote performances, and Eva Longoria and and Kerry Washington will introduce segments of the event.Later that day, Tom Hanks will host a 90-minute primetime TV special celebrating Biden’s inauguration. Other performers include Justin Timberlake, Jon Bon Jovi, Demi Lovato and Ant Clemons.Despite a raging pandemic that is forcing most inaugural events online, it was a sign that Hollywood was eager to embrace the new president-elect four years after many big names stayed away from the inauguration of Donald Trump, who is hugely unpopular in Hollywood.But how would the star wattage play across the country as Biden seeks to unite a bruised nation? Eric Dezenhall, a Washington crisis management consultant and former Reagan administration official, predicted reaction would fall “along tribal lines”.“I think it all comes down to the reinforcement of pre-existing beliefs,” Dezenhall said. “If you’re a Biden supporter, it’s nice to see Lady Gaga perform.” But, he added, “what rallied Trump supporters was the notion of an uber-elite that had nothing to do at all with them and that they couldn’t relate to”.Presidential historian Tevi Troy quipped that the starry lineup was not A-list, but D-list – “for Democratic”.“When Democrats win you get the more standard celebrities,” said Troy, author of “What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House.“With Republicans you tend to get country music stars and race-car drivers.” Referring to Lady Gaga’s outspoken support for the Biden-Harris ticket, he said he was nostalgic for the days when celebrities were not so political.“In the end, I don’t think having Lady Gaga or J-Lo is all that divisive,” he said.Attendance at the inauguration will be severely limited, due to both the pandemic and fears of continued violence, following last week’s storming of the Capitol.Outside the official events, one of the more prominent galas each inauguration is the Creative Coalition’s quadrennial ball, a benefit for arts education. This year, the ball is entirely virtual.But it is star-studded nonetheless: the event, which will involve food being delivered simultaneously to attendees in multiple cities, will boast celebrity hosts including Jason Alexander, David Arquette, Matt Bomer, Christopher Jackson, Ted Danson, Lea DeLaria, Keegan Michael-Key, Chrissy Metz, Mandy Patinkin and many others.Robin Bronk, CEO of the non-partisan arts advocacy group, said she’s been deluged with celebrities eager to participate in some way. The event typically brings in anywhere from $500,000 to $2.5m, and this year the arts community is struggling like never before.She said it’s crucial to shine a spotlight and recognize that “the right to bear arts is not a red or blue issue. One of the reasons we have this ball is that we have to ensure the arts are not forgotten.”The Presidential Inaugural Committee also announced Thursday that the invocation will be given by the Rev Leo O’Donovan, a former Georgetown University president, and the pledge of allegiance will be led by Andrea Hall, a firefighter from Georgia. There will be a poetry reading from Amanda Gorman, the first national youth poet laureate, and the benediction will be given by the Rev Silvester Beaman of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal church in Wilmington, Delaware.On the same platform, Biden sat in 2013 behind pop star Beyoncé as she sang The Star-Spangled Banner at Barack Obama’s second inauguration. James Taylor sang America the Beautiful, and Kelly Clarkson sang My Country, ’Tis of Thee.At Trump’s inauguration in 2017, the anthem was performed by 16-year-old singer Jackie Evancho. A number of top artists declined the opportunity to perform at the festivities, and one Broadway star, Jennifer Holliday, said she’d received death threats before she pulled out of her planned appearance.Most of the star power was centered at the Women’s March on Washington in 2017, where attendees included Madonna, Julia Roberts, Scarlett Johansson, Cher, Alicia Keys, Katy Perry, Emma Watson and many others. More

A little more than a week ago, most Americans – perhaps even many of Donald Trump’s supporters – were ready for the 45th president and his administration to pass into the history books. Now Trump is making us all live through history.On 6 January, the US Capitol was sacked by a pro-Trump mob, the first large-scale occupation of the citadel of American democracy since the British burned it during the War of 1812. The mob succeeded in forcing Congress to evacuate and halting the constitutional ceremony of certifying the electoral college votes – another first. Now Trump, who was charged by the House of Representatives with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the riot that left five dead, has become the first president in history ever to be impeached twice.Ten Republicans in the House voted to impeach Trump, the largest number of lawmakers ever to support impeaching a president from their own party. But then, in the words of Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming who holds the third-highest position in the House Republican leadership, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the constitution.”Trump is unlikely to become the first president removed from office, since the outgoing Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, won’t reconvene the Senate until the day before Joe Biden will be sworn in as the next president. But if the Senate does eventually vote to convict Trump, he will become the first ex-president ever to be barred from holding any future federal office.McConnell has, shockingly, told colleagues that he is open to convicting Trump. In the view of many party strategists, Republicans might be better off if Trump were prevented from running again. The possibility of a 2024 Trump campaign freezes out potential successors and prevents the party from moving in new and more positive directions. The president arguably cost his party its Senate majority with his lies and conspiracy theories about the election, which depressed Republican turnout in the pivotal Georgia senatorial races. His role in inciting the Capitol riot disgraced his party as well as his legacy. Tellingly, almost no Republicans attempted to defend him during the impeachment hearings. Instead, many warned that impeachment would further enrage Trump’s followers when what’s needed is national unity and healing.Of course, this come-together plea is rank hypocrisy from those who encouraged Trump’s shredding of the social fabric, believing that his attempt to tear the country apart would leave them with the bigger half. The claim that lions would lie down with lambs if Democrats would drop their vindictive harassment of the outgoing president conveniently overlooks the fact that the Capitol invasion happened only because Trump pushed the Big Lie that Democrats, the media, and the Deep State stole the election. And nearly two-thirds of Republicans in Congress made themselves complicit in Trump’s lie by voting to overturn the election results, even in the wake of that deluded, destructive and deadly riot.Representative Peter Meijer, a newly elected Republican from Michigan who was one of the 10 Republicans to vote for impeachment, observed that many of his party colleagues argued that since millions of Americans believe the election was stolen, therefore Congress would be justified in preventing Biden from taking the presidency. But, he pointed out, most of the voters who believe in this false reality do so precisely because they have heard it from Trump and his congressional enablers. “That doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t make it accurate. It means that you lied to them, and they trusted you and they believed your lies.”Nonetheless, 45% of Republican voters, according to a recent YouGov poll, approve of the storming of the Capitol. And that’s largely because 72% of Republicans, according to another survey, say that they don’t trust the accuracy of the 2020 election results.So long as millions of Americans believe in Trump’s Big Lie, the country becomes ungovernable and civil war beckons. If you believe what Trump and his Republican enablers tell you, you will consider Joe Biden to be “an illegitimate president”, as Trump put it in his 6 January speech, and the members of his administration to be usurpers. Why then should you pay taxes to such a government or respect its laws? Why wouldn’t you support the violent overthrow of that government, even if that revolutionary vanguard was led by the kind of neo-fascists who planned the Capitol invasion and erected a gallows outside? As Representative Meijer observed, the logical conclusion of this line of thinking makes it likely that we’ll see “political assassinations or some type of additional attempts to take lives by the folks who feel emboldened by what’s happened”.Most of Trump’s supporters would probably recoil from the charge that they’re pushing America toward civil war and revolutionary carnage. To accept the Big Lie, however, requires you to believe that the entire US justice system, in which even Trump-nominated judges rejected every baseless claim of electoral fraud asserted by his legal team, is also part of the conspiracy. And such a widespread rejection of courts and the law would shatter the political and social stability on which the country’s free-market capitalism depends.Unsurprisingly, many corporations and institutions have cut ties with Trump and his businesses and suspended contributions to those congressional Republicans who challenged Biden’s victory. Many of the party’s mega-donors have also turned off the cash spigot, worrying about reputational damage from being seen to support Trump’s false election claims and the ensuing Capitol riot.If the party has an ideology it’s what the French call je-m’en-foutisme, a contemptuous indifference toward othersWhat, really, does the Republican party believe in now other than the imperative of maintaining Trump in power? So long as the party clings to Trump’s Lost Cause, it rejects business, law and order, national unity, the constitution, fiscal responsibility, traditional morality, democratic norms and nearly everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for.If the party has an ideology it’s what the French call je-m’en-foutisme, a contemptuous indifference toward others. It was exemplified by the House Republicans during the Capitol siege who, sheltering with colleagues in a secure location, mocked requests that they wear masks; now three of the Democratic lawmakers who were there have become infected with Covid-19. If Trump’s Republican party has a motto, it’s the Arizona state Republican chair Kelli Ward’s urging the president to “Cross the Rubicon” – that is, to imitate Julius Caesar’s treasonous action that led to civil war and the collapse of the Roman Republic.If there is to be civil war, one hopes that it will be bloodless and confined to the Republican party. The party needs to separate itself from those who undermine our civil order by maintaining that Democrats stole the election. The Republican lawmakers who voted against certifying the election should be given off-ramps, perhaps in the form of opportunities to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy. The party should support efforts like the new Republican Accountability Project to channel donations to legislators who face primary challenges as a result of voting for Trump’s impeachment or removal. The party should make sincere efforts to persuade its base voters to return to reality. And it should accept and perhaps facilitate the departure of the worst bitter-enders into the political wasteland of a third party.Democrats and others who have little love for the Republican party may rejoice that Trump has brought it so low. But just as the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, warned that the government could not stand as a house divided, the country cannot now endure if one of the two major political parties rejects the legitimacy of the other when it wins elections and attempts to govern. It has to become a country with two more-or-less normal parties or none. If Trump-inspired radicalism on the right isn’t checked by responsible actors on both sides, history will record this moment as the beginning of the end of American democracy.Geoffrey Kabaservice is the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington, as well as the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party More

More Americans are dying of Covid-19 than at any time during the pandemic, the most complex mass vaccination campaign in history is off to a rocky start, and more transmissible strains of the coronavirus are emergent. January is going to be a bleak month.The most pessimistic outlook published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) predicts up to 438,000 people may be killed by Covid-19 by the end of the month in a staggering upward trend.However, even in this bleak outlook, epidemiologists said there are still reasons for optimism, buoyed by the power of changing human behavior.“My hope is this month will be the peak and things will start to look better in February,” said Caitlin Rivers, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University whose work focuses on pandemic response. “I don’t think it will be vaccination that will bend the curve. It will be washing your hands and staying home.”Predictions of a horrific death toll come from the CDC’s “ensemble” forecast, which takes in predictions from three dozen academic centers, all considering different criteria. Ensemble forecasts are known to be more accurate than single forecasts.It is this ensemble model which shows between 405,000 and 438,000 Americans may be killed by Covid-19 by the end of January. Predictions are made in four-week increments.Forecasting further into the future is considered unreliable, because the pandemic can change course so quickly. For example, majorities of Americans across the political spectrum are changing their behaviors to wear masks “every time” they leave the house, according to a recent tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.But growing discontent could undermine these improvements. In a counter example, some restaurants are breaking indoor dining bans in defiance of government regulations, arguing they cannot survive another lockdown. The CDC considers indoor dining “particularly high risk”.Further, a mass vaccination campaign now underway holds the promise of altering the pandemic, though it has stumbled. The vaccination campaign is not likely reflected in existing forecasts, because only about 3% of the population has been vaccinated.US officials had planned to vaccinate 20 million people before the end of 2020, a goal they have since walked back. To date, only about 9 million people have been vaccinated, representing about one-third of all vaccine doses distributed.Experts attribute this failure to a disengaged White House which pushed vaccine planning to states, a lack of timely federal funds, and failure to conduct public education campaigns to combat vaccine hesitancy. These failures have led to wide discrepancies between states.The differences are, “not a red versus blue state thing,” Dr Ashish K Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said on Twitter. “It’s a lack of federal leadership thing.”Again, we’ve turned pandemic response into state by state effortAnd we see large gaps in how states are doingThe Dakotas, West Virginia each vaccinated >5% of their populationAlabama, GA, MS each under 2%Not Red vs Blue state thingIts a lack of federal leadership thing— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) January 12, 2021
Herd immunity, likely requiring near-universal vaccine uptake among US adults, is seen as the ultimate goal of the vaccination campaign. But a tipping point, when the vaccine has observable positive effect, is likely to come earlier. If the Biden-Harris administration can successfully speed up vaccinations, it is possible a reduction in deaths could be the first positive outcome of the vaccination campaign.“We will likely see the positive effects of the vaccination campaign in deaths before new cases,” said Rivers. That is because, “we are specifically targeting people who are at highest risk of severe illness” for vaccination.The Biden-Harris administration is also likely to have more vaccines at their disposal. Janssen Pharmaceuticals is expected to report clinical trial data at the end of January. That data could lead to emergency authorization.Further, a vaccine candidate developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University which is already in use in the UK is expected to report trial data in February. If it is favorable, that could bring two more vaccines online in the US.The emergence of new, highly transmissible Covid-19 variants is likely to strain these optimistic developments. The B117 variant discovered in the UK is thought to be up to 70% more transmissible, and has been in the US perhaps as early as October. That will require even greater adherence to social distancing measures.“It’s very early days in the US, but we should expect this to be the dominant variant in certain areas of the US (eg, CA) within the next 6-8 weeks (late February/early March),” said Professor Kristian G Andersen, a professor of immunology at Scripps Research Institute on Twitter.While there are 72 lab-confirmed cases of B117 in the US according to the CDC, the true prevalence is unknown. To find that out, the US would need to have a systematic genomic sequencing surveillance program. That is not happening. And B117 is not the only variant of concern.“I’m also quite worried about B1351,” said Rivers. “There is early evidence it is more transmissible [than dominant strains] and we’re looking for that one even less than B117,” she said.The future of Covid-19 outbreaks in the long-term is difficult to predict. The majority of scientists believe Covid-19 will not be eliminated – right now it is too widespread and transmissible. However, several factors could influence the severity of future outbreaks.That includes unknowns, such as whether infection by other coronaviruses confers immunity or partial immunity to Covid-19, the length of time vaccines protect people against the coronavirus, and seasonal variations of the virus.Those unknowns may require, “prolonged or intermittent social distancing … into 2022.” More

Donald Trump is set to leave the White House and Republicans are about to relinquish control of the Senate, but experts are warning the US is facing a wave of rightwing ‘Christian nationalist’ legislation in 2021, as the religious right aims to thrust Christianity into everyday American life.With the supreme court now dominated by Trump-appointed conservative justices, elected officials in states across the country are set to introduce bills which would hack away at LGTBQ rights, reproductive rights, challenge the ability of couples to adopt children, and see religion forced into classrooms, according to a report by the American Atheists organization.In recent years Republicans have sought to infuse religion into state politics across the country, many of the bills lifted from model legislation drafted by well-funded Christian lobbying organizations under an effort known as “Project Blitz”.As the coronavirus pandemic hit the US 2020 proved a relatively quiet year for religious bills, but in 2021, the US could see Republicans make up for lost time.“Very few bills managed to be pushed forward last year due to the pandemic,” said Alison Gill, vice-president for legal and policy at American Atheists, which seeks to protect the separation of church and state. “Those issues that are contentious in the culture war will continue to move forward this year, and will affect LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and non-religious people and women and reproductive access.”Over the past five years a wave of discriminatory laws have been introduced in state legislatures, frequently in the name of Christianity. LGBTQ people, in particular, have been targeted, including efforts to prevent trans people using certain bathrooms, and to prevent LGBTQ couples from adopting children.The danger isn’t just to people in individual states. With the supreme court now dominated 6-3 by conservatives, challenges to federal law could work their way to the highest court in the US, where decisions could enshrine discriminatory laws.Gill said that after Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the court in 2018, some states pushed a flurry of reproductive rights laws which would limit women’s access to abortion. The Christian right could be further emboldened after Amy Coney Barrett’s controversial appointment to the supreme court in October.“In a lot of ways, and I think the reproductive bills are a good example of this, they’re not just passing laws that do negative things, they’re trying to set up future cases that will then go before the court, that can be used to advance an agenda,” Gill said.“It’s not just about the negative law itself.”There have been multiple efforts to blend the separation of church and state in recent years, driven by Christian nationalists who believe America was established as, and should remain, a Christian country.In 2019, Christian hardliners introduced bills in several American states which would see the phrase “In God we trust” displayed on public buildings, in schools and on public vehicles, including police cars. Six states – Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama and Arizona – approved versions of this legislation, and it became law for every public school in those states to display the phrase.A year earlier, Oklahoma passed an adoption law which allows private adoption agencies to turn away LGBTQ couples on religious grounds. It became the 10th state since 2015 to pass some form of the law, which allows child placement agencies to deny anyone who does not match their religious or moral beliefs, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found.In most of these states, parts of the legislation had almost identical wording. That’s a result of Project Blitz, an effort by rightwing Christian organizations to push through bills furthering their aims.Project Blitz provides draft legislation to lawmakers across the country. Frequently, that legislation is copied, pasted and presented in state capitols. In 2018, state lawmakers introduced 74 bills similar to Project Blitz draft legislation, according to America Atheists. The bills ranged “from measures designed to restrict same-sex marriage to allowing adoption agencies to deny placements because of religion”, American Atheists said.The aim is also to stuff up state houses with legislation, drawing mostly Democratic legislators’ time and attention away from other issues.“It’s kind of like whack-a-mole for the other side,” David Barton, founder of the Christian-right organization WallBuilders and one of four members of Project Blitz’s steering team, told state legislators in a call which was made public.“It’ll drive ‘em crazy that they’ll have to divide their resources out in opposing this.”Project Blitz, and much of the Christian nationalist legislation, has broader aims than just drawing time and serving as an irritant, however. Christian nationalists hope to pave the way for further attacks.Katherine Stewart, a journalist and author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, said leaders behind Christian nationalists efforts “are playing a long and ambitious game”.The people behind Christianity-based legislative efforts grouped their various efforts into three categories, according to how difficult they would be to pass, Stewart said, and each is part of a larger picture.“The first category consisted of largely symbolic gestures, like resolutions to emblazon the motto ‘In God We Trust’ in public school classrooms,” Stewart said.“But the point of phase one was to prepare the ground for phases two and three, which aimed to entangle government with their version of religion in deeper ways.“Considered individually, these bills making their ways through state legislatures appear to have a scattershot quality. In reality, they are very often components of a coordinated, overarching strategy.” More

Joe Biden, the US president-elect, has unveiled a $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus package to tackle the virus and the economic crisis it has triggered.
Vaccination and testing efforts in the US will be sustained with $160bn, a further $350bn will be issued for state and local government health programmes, and $1tn is to go families
‘No time to waste’: Biden unveils $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus package More

Watching history unfold in Washington DC from her home in London, Jan Halper-Hayes admitted to being slightly incredulous about the images of Donald Trump supporters storming the US Capitol.“It was kind of in some ways unbelievable,” says the long-term activist in the Republican party and former vice-president of its UK branch. She claims she has received “good information” to indicate that “Antifa people” were present at the riot.The unsubstantiated claim that Antifa – a catch-all term used by the president and others to describe anti-Trump protest movements – had infiltrated the mob is one that some of his most die-hard supporters have clung to.That the idea has made the leap across the Atlantic underlines how the Republican diaspora have not been immune to some of the bitter controversies splitting the party in its homeland.In the UK, the Trump presidency has taken something of a toll on the local branch of Republicans Overseas, which largely operates as a social circle for expatriate supporters who organise a 4th July party each year and carry out voter registration.Some members, and particularly young women, previously involved with the group have stepped away since the president’s 2016 election and, in some cases, even voted for Joe Biden. Halper-Hayes, a former member of Trump’s White House transition team and visitor to his Mar-a-Lago resort, remains loyal nevertheless, insisting that it has never been hard to square support for Trump with traditional Republican values.“I knew him when I lived in New York, so I have known him through all his iterations. I was on his transition team, and from encounters and observations I can tell you that he is so friendly and funny. It’s a shame that he used Twitter for a nasty side because that’s not who he really is.“Whether I am in an Uber car or in a supermarket, people love Trump here in the UK. It’s the BBC and the Guardian that take on a different mainstream media narrative.”Molly Kiniry has a very different take on Trump. She watched his rise both within the party and in national US politics with what she says was “increasing amounts of horror”. She views his most recent conduct as “a manifestation of the mental instability that has been there all along”.Not that being a Republican supporter in an often left-leaning city like London was ever without complexities. “What I normally say when people express surprise that I’m a Republican is something to the effect of ‘I am, I just hide the horns very well’.”Casting her US presidential vote for Joe Biden this time came easily, says Kiniry, a former spokesperson for Republicans Overseas UK and now a graduate student at Cambridge who acknowledges that the president and his loyalists would likely regard her as a Rino [Republican in name only].Like others, she says she is looking forward to her party regaining its traditional identity. She remains optimistic. “I don’t think I would still be a registered Republican after the last five or six years if that was not the case.”She is withering about those who have stood by the president in the US seat of power and, as a native Washingtonian, admits that the destructive events in DC had cut deep. “I think the members who did not vote to impeach the president will have to answer to voters, and to history as well, quite frankly.”A third view of sorts is espoused by Greg Swenson, a spokesperson for Republicans Overseas, who insists that Trump managed to win over him and others who had originally wanted someone else to be the party’s 2016 candidate. It was notable today that the majority of the UK branch’s board were women, he says. “I criticised him, but I can say that I have been very happy with what he did.”As an investment banker, he was attracted in particular to Trump’s stewardship of the US economy. “I became more of a supporter as we saw the results, for example, of tax deregulation, but it was also the massive pushback against him from Democrats and the left. As they became more unhinged, the more dug in Trump supporters have become.”That said, Swenson confesses that he is relishing a spell “in opposition” after four years defending a president who, he concedes, “finally overdid it”. He adds: “Trump fatigue is exhausting for every one, whether they are supporters or opponents – so I’m kind of looking forward to it.” More

Fifteen-year-old Sevan Minassian-Godner’s brain struggled to process the images of violent, pro-Trump insurrectionists defacing the Capitol.The scene reminded the Berkeley high school sophomore of a movie, maybe the Hunger Games. Not the unbreakable idea of American democracy he’s grown up learning about from pop culture, books and Hollywood.“One thing I remember going through my mind was, how could people do this? How is it possible?” he said. “To see on live television this revolt to a fair election really opened my eyes to how just awful right now our world is getting.”From Berkeley to Milwaukee to Maryland, young people are coming to terms with last week’s violence that left five dead and a president impeached for the second time. And right alongside, teachers are having to answer thorny questions about democracy, race, policing and where the country goes from here.Many teachers say kids have been remarkably resilient and curious about the events at the Capitol. They have also noticed that many of their students of color, sadly, did not find the scene shocking.The violence has taught students some tough lessons about the America they are coming of age in – one that has normalized political division and proved time and again that all citizens are not treated equally under the law. It’s important not to shy away from these conversations in the classroom, and to place events in context, educators say.“Reactionary violence is a thread in our nation’s history,” says Oscar Ramos, a ninth-grade history and government teacher in Maryland. “When people say they don’t understand how it could happen, that’s not true. We have to be clear-eyed in the history of our country to make sense of the events for kids. I believe they can handle being entrusted with hard truths.”A lesson in inequalityFew schools may be better positioned to help students unpack the conversation than Berkeley High, located in Berkeley, California, a cradle of progressive activism where discussions about white supremacy, voter suppression and toxic masculinity are woven into the ninth-grade curriculum.As events unfolded at the Capitol, Sevan’s mom, Hasmig Minassian, who teaches the freshmen seminar, said she and co-teachers quickly pivoted from a planned lesson on gender.After starting by defining terms like coup, sedition, insurrection, domestic terrorist and treason, teachers framed the day’s class by reminding students that what they had just seen was unprecedented.Then teachers presented contrasting images: photos of Black Lives Matter protesters doused with pepper-spray by militarized police forces, juxtaposed with images of a Capitol police officer taking a selfie with a rioter, or peacefully escorting an older intruder out of the building.In the images, students took note of the fact that unlike other political movements they have studied, this one seemed mostly devoid of young people, made up of instead of older white males – people who students described as being baited into violence by the very president they trusted, Minassian said.“Kids are really attuned to the fairness of things,” she said. “Forget left or right – they’re all about sniffing out what’s fair or unfair. And I think they saw a group of people being taken advantage of by Trump, and were really curious about the punishment for breaking into the building, or Nancy Pelosi’s office, then posting photos of it.”But to Minassian, what stands out most was how most students found the events troubling, but not unexpected.“It made me a little sad to hear how unsurprised the students were. I had to pick up more adults from the floor than kids that day,” Minassian said.For students of color, she added, the differential treatment by police was a reality they already understood. “Seeing burly white men assaulting the halls of government, with representatives hiding under their desks in fear, it didn’t feel that different from what they feel just walking down the street and passing a cop. It was like: welcome to my world.”‘Don’t shy away from hard conversations’Across the country in Montgomery county, Maryland, not far from the Capitol attack, Oscar Ramos started Thursday’s discussion with historical context, reminding students that democracy wasn’t meant for people of color when the country was first founded by white men, some of them slave owners, and how racialized violence is a recurring theme in US history.That day, in fact, the class had been scheduled to discuss Black Wall Street, a thriving center of Black culture and commerce that in 1921 was looted and destroyed by a white mob in what became known as the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the deadliest racist attacks in US history.Ramos recalls pausing frequently as he led an open discussion about the Capitol attack, choosing words carefully so as not to alienate students whose narratives conflicted with those he presented. As a Latino teacher, Ramos worries about accusations of bias in the content he teaches. But, he said, choosing not to talk about racial violence is a form of bias, too.Janine Domingues, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute who specializes in helping children and families who have been affected by trauma, said it was important to be truthful when talking with children about the events at the Capitol, even if it means leaving out graphic details and keeping explanations simple.“For children, it’s important to check in on what they’re feeling and offer reassurance. ‘I know what you’re seeing is scary, but we’re safe right now,’” Domingues said. Children of color and those from marginalized communities may feel particularly vulnerable and targeted in the wake of racialized events, she added.Older children and teenagers may be ready for an open dialogue about what the events mean for the country, she said, though adults will still want to filter information and guide the conversation.“I think it’s a tremendous growth opportunity and a chance to give students skills for how to process what’s happening,” Domingues said. “As long as we don’t shy away from these hard conversations.”‘You have control over your actions’Those hard conversations were under way last week in the midwestern city of Milwaukee, as David Castillo, a planning assistant with the school district’s office of Black and Latino male achievement, helped lead a dialogue with the students he mentors.Castillo said students keyed in on how differently police had handled Black Lives Matter protests over the summer.“I could see the wheels turning in their heads, the cognitive dissonance that comes from recognizing the hypocrisy of that the same group that shouted ‘Blue Lives Matter’ are now attacking police,” Castillo said.“As Black and brown kids from inner-city Milwaukee, they know how law enforcement responds. It’s like: I already believed this, and now I have tangible evidence,’ he said.One fifth-grade teacher in Milwaukee, who asked not to be identified, said she was “blown away” by the level of engagement and sophistication with which her students discussed last week’s events.Part of the morning was dedicated to helping students recognize misinformation by comparing sources, a skill that she says educators have a moral obligation to equip students with. But most of the time was devoted to open discussion – one that lasted three hours.One student connected the apparent complicity by some of the Capitol police to the lack of Latino representation in textbooks. Others expressed fear, she said, asking whether the politicians in the Capitol were safe or if they had been kidnapped, or what could happen during Joe Biden’s inauguration.“I had to be honest that I shared those concerns about further conflict,” she said “I thought it would be more powerful if I was real with them.”Across town, on the city’s north side, first-grade teacher Angela Harris focused Thursday’s class on empathy and emotional regulation, using rioters’ actions as an example on how not to react.To make the discussion concrete, she tied it to the mock elections held previously in class – which Joe Biden won – and asked how they would feel if someone was so upset by the results they tore up the classroom. Students were indignant, she said. They immediately wanted to know what consequences such a person would face.Every student in Harris’s class is Black. Even at six years old, students noticed that police seemed to respond differently to the white mob than the ways they have seen cops behave in their community. Milwaukee has one of the highest incarceration rates in the US for Black men. More than half of all Black men living in Milwaukee county have been incarcerated before they reach 40, according to a 2013 study by UW-Milwaukee.“They have a fear of police even at five or six years old. It’s part of their everyday life,” Harris said. “For some of them that was the first time they might have seen white people interact with police,” she said.Harris said she didn’t dive deeply into this thread – they’ve already seen enough disparities just living in Milwaukee, she said, one of the nation’s most segregated cities – choosing instead to focus on the skills they could grow.“I want them to understand that at any moment, you have to be the one the who has control over your actions. And what happened at the Capitol is a perfect example of folks not being able to control their emotions.” More

This week, Donald Trump sanctioned the execution of the only woman on federal death row: Lisa Montgomery. She was the 11th prisoner to be killed since the president restarted federal executions in July last year. The Guardian US’s Ed Pilkington looks at why Trump has carried out more federal executions than any other president in almost 200 years

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The chief reporter for Guardian US, Ed Pilkington, talks to Anushka Asthana about the history of the federal death penalty, which Donald Trump revived last July. Trump has so far sanctioned the executions of 11 prisoners, with a further two expected to take place by the end of this week. Lisa Montgomery, who was killed by lethal injection this week, was a particularly high-profile case. Subjected to torture and sexual violence as a child, she was suffering from extreme mental illness when she committed a horrific crime. The state of her mental health was not taken into account at her original trial. So why is Trump carrying out so many executions? Ed tells Anushka that although use of the death penalty is shrinking in the US, it is still employed in many of the former confederate states. You cannot talk about the use of the death penalty, says Ed, without looking at America’s relationship with its racist history and the impact it still has today. Archive: Newsy, Today, BBC News, CBS This Morning, AP, MSNBC; YouTube (Daily Kos), TED More