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      Harry Reid: Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Obama attend Nevada memorial

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      Harry Reid: Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Obama attend Nevada memorial
      Carole King and Brandon Flowers set to perform
      Former Senate leader died in December at 82
      Obituary: Harry Reid, 1939-2021
      The life of the former Senate majority leader Harry Reid was celebrated by two presidents and other Democratic leaders in Las Vegas on Saturday.Strategy shift: Biden confronts Trump head on after year of silent treatmentRead morePresident Joe Biden, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, were scheduled to speak at a memorial for the longtime Senate leader, who died on 28 December at home in Henderson, Nevada, at 82 and of complications from pancreatic cancer.Barack Obama, who credits Reid for his rise to the White House, was scheduled to deliver the eulogy.“The president believes Harry Reid is one of the greatest leaders in Senate history,” Karine Jean-Pierre, a deputy White House press secretary, said on Friday. “So he is traveling to pay his respects to a man who had a profound impact on this nation.”Biden served for two decades with Reid in the Senate and worked with him for eight years as vice-president.Elder M Russell Ballard, a senior apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was also to speak at the 2,000-seat concert hall about Reid’s 60 years in the Mormon faith. Vice-President Kamala Harris also attended.“These are not only some of the most consequential leaders of our time – they are also some of Harry’s best friends,” Reid’s wife of 62 years, Landra Reid, said in a statement announcing plans for the Smith Center for the Performing Arts event.“Harry loved every minute of his decades working with these leaders and the incredible things they accomplished together.”Reid’s daughter and four sons were scheduled to speak too.In a letter to Reid before his death, Obama recalled their close relationship, their different backgrounds and Reid’s climb from an impoverished former gold mining town of Searchlight in the Mojave Desert to leadership in Congress.“Not bad for a skinny, poor kid from Searchlight,” Obama wrote. “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”Reid spent 34 years in Washington and led the Senate through a crippling recession and the Republican takeover of the House after the 2010 elections. He muscled Obama’s signature healthcare act through the Senate.Reid hitchhiked 40 miles to high school and was an amateur boxer before he was elected to the Nevada state Assembly at 28. He had graduated from Utah State University and worked nights as a US Capitol police officer while attending George Washington University Law School in Washington.In 1970, at 30, he was elected state lieutenant governor with a Democratic governor, Mike O’Callaghan. Reid was elected to the House in 1982 and the Senate in 1986.Reid built a political machine in Nevada that for years helped Democrats win key elections. When he retired in 2016 after an exercise accident at home left him blind in one eye, he picked a former Nevada attorney general, Catherine Cortez Masto, to replace him.Cortez Masto was the first woman from Nevada and the first Latina ever elected to the US Senate.“Most of all, you’ve been a good friend,” Obama told Reid in his letter. “As different as we are, I think we both saw something of ourselves in each other – a couple of outsiders who had defied the odds and knew how to take a punch and cared about the little guy.”Democrats could still salvage Build Back Better – and perhaps their midterm prospects Read moreThe singer-songwriter and environmentalist Carole King and Brandon Flowers, lead singer of the Las Vegas-based rock band the Killers, were scheduled to perform during the memorial.“The thought of having Carole King performing in Harry’s honor is a tribute truly beyond words,” Landra Reid said.Flowers, a longtime friend, shares the Reids’ faith and has been a headliner at events including a Lake Tahoe Summit that Reid founded in 1997 to draw attention to the ecology of the lake, and the National Clean Energy Summit that Reid helped launch in 2008 in Las Vegas. Among other songs, Flowers was scheduled to sing the Nevada state anthem, Home Means Nevada.Those flying to Las Vegas arrived at the newly renamed Harry Reid international airport. It was formerly named for Pat McCarran, a former Democratic US senator from Nevada who once owned the airfield and whose legacy is clouded by racism and antisemitism.TopicsUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsDemocratsJoe BidenBarack ObamaNancy PelosinewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Manchin appears to have withdrawn offer to back $1.8tn bill on Biden agenda

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      Joe Manchin appears to have withdrawn offer to back $1.8tn bill on Biden agendaConservative Democratic senator has signalled privately he is not interested in supporting any Build Back Better package

      Can Democrats can salvage Build Back Better?
      A $1.8tn spending offer proposed to the White House in late 2021 by Senator Joe Manchin appears to be off the table, following another breakdown in talks between the moderate Democrat from West Virginia and the Biden White House, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.Harry Reid: Biden, Pelosi, Schumer and Obama to attend Nevada memorialRead moreManchin told reporters this week he is no longer involved in discussions with the White House and has signaled privately that he is not interested in approving any legislation like Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Package, the newspaper said, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.Manchin’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The legislation is one of Biden’s signature domestic priorities. Manchin’s vote is critical in the evenly divided Senate. In December, his opposition torpedoed Build Back Better, drawing ire from progressives and sending the party scrambling to find a way to resurrect the package.Biden’s plan includes funding for high-priority issues for many Americans, including free pre-school, support for childcare costs, coverage of home-care costs for the elderly and expansion of free school meals. It also seeks to fund measures to combat the climate crisis.Manchin has spoken with officials and others seeking to garner his support, the Post said, among them the senior White House aide Steve Ricchetti; a former economic adviser to Donald Trump, Larry Kudlow; and the Republican senator Mitt Romney, of Utah.Manchin is the only Democrat in major elected office in West Virginia. Attempts to secure his support for Build Back Better have been dogged by fears he could quit the party, either to sit as an independent or to switch to the Republicans, thereby tipping the Senate to the GOP.TopicsJoe ManchinDemocratsUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      Strategy shift: Biden confronts Trump head on after year of silent treatment

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      Strategy shift: Biden confronts Trump head on after year of silent treatmentPresident strikes different tone in tacit admission that ignoring the most powerful force in the Republican party is risky In the first moments of his presidency, Joe Biden called on Americans to set aside their deep divisions inflamed by a predecessor he intentionally ignored. He emphasized national unity and appealed to Americans to come together to “end this uncivil war”.The Trump menace is darker than ever – and he’s snapping at Biden’s heels | Jonathan FreedlandRead moreNearly a year later, as a divided nation reflects on the first anniversary of the 6 January assault on the US Capitol, the uncivil war he sought to extinguish rages on, stronger than ever. In a searing speech on Thursday, Biden struck a different tone.He said he was “crystal clear” about the dangers facing the nation, and accused Donald Trump and his political allies of holding a “dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy”. In the course of the 21-minute speech, delivered from the US Capitol, Biden offered himself as a defender of democracy in the “battle for the soul of America”.“I will stand in this breach,” he promised. “I will defend this nation.”That moment of visceral speech-making marked a shift in strategy for how Biden has chosen to engage Trump – whose name he never uttered but instead taunted as the “defeated former president”.The decision to break his silence about Trump comes at a challenging moment in Biden’s presidency, with his Build Back Better agenda stalled, the Covid-19 pandemic resurgent and economic malaise widespread. It also reflected the reality that, far from being shunned, Trump remains the most powerful force in the Republican party and a potential rival to Biden in 2024.Confronting Trump was a calculated risk. Trump seized the opportunity to hurl all manner of insults and accusations at his successor, whose remarks he said were “very hurtful to many people”.But Biden’s speech was an acknowledgment that there were dangers in continuing to ignore Trump and what Biden called his “web of lies”. Recent polling suggests the vast majority of Republicans believe Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about the election fraud while a growing percentage of Americans are willing to tolerate political violence in some instances.Republican-controlled states are pursuing a raft of new voting restrictions, motivated in part by the doubts they sowed about the 2020 election results. At the same time, Republicans are passing laws that inject partisanship into the administration of elections and vote-counting while stripping power from and driving power from election officials who resisted pressure to throw out votes or overturn the elections in their state.“It was essential to be specific about the problem, and the source of the crisis,” said Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University. “Otherwise the vague rhetoric, without agency, that we hear about polarization misses the way in which Trump and the GOP are the source of so much instability.”But he warned that a speech can only do so much. “Without holding people accountable for January 6 and the campaign against the 2020 election, and without real legislation to protecting voting rights and the electoral process, the ‘dagger at the throat of democracy’ won’t go away.”In his remarks, Biden argued that protecting voting rights was paramount to safeguarding American democracy. He sought to connect the dots between Trump’s promotion that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud and Republicans’ coordinated effort to “subvert” and undermine the electoral process in states where they control the levers of power.“Right now, in state after state, new laws are being written – not to protect the vote, but to deny it; not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert it; not to strengthen or protect our democracy, but because the former president lost,” he said.Biden will follow up on the theme on Tuesday when he delivers another consequential speech on voting rights. In Atlanta, Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris will call for the passage of two voting rights bills that face daunting odds in the US Senate: the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.The issue of voting rights has taken center stage after hopes of passing Biden’s sweeping domestic policy agenda were dashed by the opposition of Senator Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat from West Virginia. So far Republican opposition has blocked passage of the legislation in the evenly divided chamber, where Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.Manchin again holds the keys on voting rights legislation, which he broadly supports. But his opposition to eliminating the filibuster has forced Democrats to pursue other avenues such as creating an exception in the rules for certain legislation. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said he would schedule a vote on easing the filibuster rules not later than 17 January, which is Martin Luther King Day.Biden has faced immense pressure from civil rights leaders and voting rights advocates frustrated with his handling of the issue, seen as critical to the president’s legacy. Indeed, a coalition of Georgia-based voting rights groups warned Biden and Harris not to bother coming to the state unless they delivered a concrete plan to move forward, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters this week that Biden planned to stress the “urgent need to pass legislation to protect the constitutional right to vote and the integrity of our elections”.Spencer Overton, an election law expert and the president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, hopes Biden will use his bully pulpit to explain why passing federal voting rights legislation is so essential to combatting the lies and conspiracies undermining faith in the nation’s system of government.“Those lies have real consequences,” said. “Sometimes they’re graphic, as we saw a year ago on 6 January, but sometimes they silently erode democracy by preventing average citizens from participating in our democracy, and exercising their freedom to vote.”“This is the most important legislation in Congress now,” he added. “There’s just no benefit in waiting. The moment is now.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Democrats could still salvage Build Back Better – and perhaps their midterm prospects

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      Democrats could still salvage Build Back Better – and perhaps their midterm prospects Best-case scenario: a scaled down plan that saves popular programs and a billionaire tax to pay for it Democrats were already facing a bleak landscape for this year’s midterm elections, with Joe Biden’s approval rating languishing in the low 40s and his party holding narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate.Now, with Senator Joe Manchin’s refusal to support the Build Back Better Act, the chances of Republicans regaining control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate as well, appear higher than ever.If Democrats cannot pass Biden’s signature legislation, which includes massive investments in childcare, healthcare and climate initiatives, their failure may convince enough voters to support Republicans in November. However, if Democrats try to move forward with a version of the bill that Manchin supports, as some strategists have suggested, the final product may not be as attractive to voters.Democrats’ unappealing options will probably aid Republicans, who were already favored to take back the House after the midterms. Historically, the president’s party loses House seats in midterm elections, and Republicans need to flip only five districts to regain the majority.The decennial redistricting process has aided House Republicans’ cause, as the party controls the governorship and the state legislature in 23 states, compared with 14 states for Democrats. That advantage has allowed Republicans to draw more favorable congressional maps in a number of crucial swing states. Democrats have also accused Republicans of using voting restrictions, which were approved by at least 19 states last year, to limit their supporters’ access to the ballot box.In the evenly divided Senate, Republicans need to gain just one seat to take control of the chamber. Rick Scott, who leads Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, has already said he expects the party to have “a hell of a year”.Democrats’ possible failure to pass the Build Back Better Act may further assist Republican candidates, as it could strengthen their argument to voters that the $1.75tn spending package is the wrong solution for families struggling to recover financially from the coronavirus pandemic.Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, attacked the Democratic bill as a “reckless spending spree”, telling the Guardian, “Americans reject their failed agenda and Republicans will continue to fight for American workers and businesses.”But despite Manchin’s surprise announcement last month that he would not support the Build Back Better Act, the White House and Democratic congressional leaders are still voicing optimism about getting the bill passed.“We have a very slim majority in the Senate. That means you need every single senator from across the spectrum of the Democratic party agreeing to what a package looks like moving forward,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said last week.“We’re not naive about how challenging that is and how challenging it can be, but we feel good about the possibility of getting something done. What the final package looks like, I can’t outline that for you at this point in time.”However, just hours earlier, Manchin had insisted that there were no conversations happening between him and the White House. “I’m really not going to talk about Build Back Better any more because I think I’ve been very clear on that. There [are] no negotiations going on at this time,” Manchin told reporters on Capitol Hill.Manchin’s opposition to the bill has intensified concerns among Democratic leaders that many vulnerable members may lose re-election this year, as voters blame the party for failing to follow through on their campaign promises despite having full control of the White House and Congress.“Voters have shown time and again that they want a robust economic environment creating good opportunities to build a better life for themselves and their family,” said Congressman Brad Schneider, chair of the political arm of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, the NewDem Action Fund. “At the end of the day, we have to show working families we’re responsive to their kitchen table concerns.”Some Democratic strategists have argued the party’s best option now is to work with Manchin to craft a version of the Build Back Better Act that he can support and then move forward with that proposal.“Mr Manchin said at various points that he could support a scaled-back bill that made long-term commitments to fewer priorities,” David Axelrod, a former adviser to Barack Obama, said in a recent New York Times column. “If, through a retooled Build Back Better Act, Mr Biden can achieve significant and durable progress on some major priorities that will benefit children and families for generations, Democrats would be wise to celebrate and tout those gains instead of complaining about what wasn’t possible.”Schneider echoed that argument, telling the Guardian, “Since the start of negotiations, New Dems have been advocating to do a select number of things better for longer, and we still believe that approach is the best path forward.”But a Manchin-approved version of the Build Back Better Act does not come without potential pitfalls. Manchin has raised concerns about the cost of the legislation and the impact on the national debt if all of its programs are made permanent. (Under the current version of the bill, many of its programs expire after a year or a few years.)The child tax credit, which was expanded under the coronavirus relief package signed by Biden last year, is particularly worrisome for deficit hawks. The current version of the Build Back Better bill calls for the expanded program to continue through 2022, at a cost of $185bn. However, if the expanded program is made permanent, as many Democrats would prefer, the 10-year cost of that policy would be $1.6tn, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Despite the cost of the policy, many Americans have come to rely on the monthly checks from the expanded child tax credit, and failing to extend the program could be disastrous for families’ budgets and Democrats’ electoral prospects.“If [Manchin] brings down the price tag below $1.75tn, if he cuts really popular things like the child tax credit especially or any of the pharma provisions, then that could be disastrous for Democrats,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.But Green argued there may be an upside to Manchin’s deficit concerns. If Manchin is determined to lower the national debt, it could provide an opening for progressives to advocate for revenue-raising proposals that they support, such as a tax on billionaires.“There’s actually a scenario where we raise $1.75tn and invest that money, and then on top of that implement a very popular billionaires tax, the majority of which goes toward debt reduction,” Green said. “What that would do is give Democrats this extremely popular talking point that we’re the ones who finally taxed billionaires.”Of course, that scenario will only be possible if Democrats are successful at bringing Manchin back to the negotiating table and actually getting a bill across the finish line. “Depending on how the negotiations go, Manchin’s current involvement could make things disastrous or very good for Democrats,” Green said. “It really depends on where things land.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Congressman Jamie Raskin on the day democracy almost crumbled in the US: Politics Weekly podcast

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      Jonathan Freedland speaks to the House Representative from Maryland about last January’s Capitol riots, leading an impeachment trial against Trump, investigating colleagues and how his own grief influenced his work in 2021

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archive: C-SPAN, NBC, CNBC In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy, is available here Listen to David Smith on Thursday’s episode of Today in Focus Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      Historians mark 6 January with urgent warning on threats to US democracy

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      Historians mark 6 January with urgent warning on threats to US democracyTheir comments come as many Americans, particularly Trump supporters, continue to deny the dark reality of the Capitol insurrection Some of America’s most prominent historians gave an urgent warning about the state of American democracy as they gathered on Capitol Hill on Thursday to commemorate the 6 January insurrection.Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jon Meacham condemned the attack on the Capitol, which was carried out by a group of former president Donald Trump’s supporters to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.They warned that the US remained at a crucial turning point amid ongoing threats to its democratic systems.Biden condemns Trump’s ‘web of lies’ a year on from deadly Capitol assaultRead more“What you saw a year ago today was the worst instincts of both human nature and American politics,” Meacham said. “And it’s either a step on the way to the abyss or it is a call to arms figuratively for citizens to engage.”Echoing Meacham’s message, Goodwin argued that this moment represents an opportunity for Americans to rededicate themselves to the cause of democracy, citing the example set by those who fought for the Union in the civil war and marched for civil rights in the 1960’s.“We’ve come through these really tough times before,” Goodwin said. “We’ve had lots of people who were willing to step up and put their public lives against their private lives. And that’s what we’ve got to depend on today. That’s what we need in these years and months ahead.”The historians’ comments came as many Americans, particularly those who support Trump, continue to deny the dark reality of the Capitol insurrection.Only about 4 in 10 Republicans describe the 6 January attack as very violent or extremely violent, according to a recent AP-NORC poll. About 30% of Republicans say the insurrection was not violent at all, while another 30% say it was only somewhat violent.The insurrection resulted in the deaths of five people, including US Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick. In the year since, four other law enforcement officers who responded to the Capitol that day – Capitol police officer Howard Liebengood, and Gunther Hashida, Kyle DeFreytag and Jeffrey Smith of Washington’s Metropolitan police department – have died by suicide. More than 100 other officers were injured on 6 January, and many of them continue to struggle with traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety.At the historians’ event, House speaker Nancy Pelosi played a video depicting some of the violence that occurred during the insurrection. The video included footage showing law enforcement officers being beaten and attacked with chemical spray and hockey sticks by insurrectionists.“One year later, it is essential that we do not allow anyone to rewrite history or whitewash the gravity of what took place,” Pelosi said.Despite the chilling evidence of the insurrection’s devastating consequences, Trump himself used the anniversary as an opportunity to spread the “big lie” of widespread fraud in the 2020 election and downplay the violence of the attack.“To watch Biden speaking is very hurtful to many people. They’re the ones who tried to stop the peaceful transfer with a rigged election,” Trump said in a statement full of wrong and baseless allegations. “Never forget the crime of the 2020 presidential election.”In his own scathing remarks to commemorate the anniversary of the attack, Biden accused his predecessor of having “created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election,” and the president underscored the need to set the record straight about 6 January.“The former president and his supporters are trying to rewrite history. They want you to see election day as the day of insurrection and the riot that took place here on January 6th as the true expression of the will of the people,” Biden said on Capitol Hill. “Can you think of a more twisted way to look at this country – to look at America? I cannot.”Pointing to Trump and his allies’ alarming efforts to downplay the insurrection, Goodwin argued that the work of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack was vital and could help prevent similar violence in the future.“We have to retell the story of what happened on January 6, with all of the gaps filled in,” Goodwin said. “And I do believe that a line will be drawn.”TopicsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpJoe BidenUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Biden condemns Trump’s ‘web of lies’ a year on from deadly Capitol assault

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      Biden condemns Trump’s ‘web of lies’ a year on from deadly Capitol assault
      President blames predecessor for role in violence of 6 January
      ‘The lies that drove the anger and madness have not abated’
      Biden denounces Trump in anniversary speech – follow live
      01:43Joe Biden on Thursday forcefully denounced Donald Trump for spreading a “web of lies” about the legitimacy of the 2020 election in a desperate attempt to cling to power, accusing the former president and his allies of holding a “dagger at the throat of American democracy”.The US president condemned his predecessor’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as a “failed” pursuit, but one that continues to imperil American democracy one year after the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, when a violent mob of Trump loyalists breached the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s presidential election victory.Biden blames Trump’s ‘web of lies’ for US Capitol attack in first anniversary speech – liveRead moreIn a speech from the Capitol marking the first anniversary of the deadly assault, Biden was unsparing in his assessment of the harm caused by the “defeated former president” whose “bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or constitution”.“For the first time in our history, the president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob reached the Capitol,” Biden said, never mentioning Trump by name. “But they failed.”And yet the falsehoods and conspiracies that were a precursor to the violence still persist, Biden warned. He asked Americans to recommit to the protection of the nation’s 200-year-old system of government.“At this moment we must decide: what kind of nation we are going to be?” Biden said, speaking from the National Statuary Hall in the Capitol’s inner sanctum, one of several spots overrun and defiled by rioters on 6 January. He warned: “The lies that drove the anger and madness we saw in this place, they have not abated.”Trump originally planned to hold a news conference from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday evening, but canceled amid pressure from Republicans and conservative allies who worried it would be a harmful distraction.But that did not prevent Trump from issuing a series of furious statements in which he continued to perpetuate the “big lie”, claims that were rejected by dozens of courts, Republican election officials and members of his own administration.“They got away with something, and it is leading to our country’s destruction,” Trump wrote in one such salvo that made no mention of the violence that occurred in his name that day. Four people died in the chaos of the hours-long siege, as rioters overran police barricades, wielding flagpoles and fire extinguishers to break windows and battle law enforcement officers. One US Capitol police officer, Brian Sicknick, died a day after being attacked by rioters and 140 police officers were injured.Most Republicans were physically absent from the Capitol on Thursday, with many of party’s senators, including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, traveling to Georgia for the funeral of their former colleague Johnny Isakson, who died in December.In a statement, McConnell called the attack “antithetical to the rule of law” and said he supported efforts to hold accountable those who broke the law.‘I was there’: Democrat recalls horror and fury on day of Capitol attackRead moreBut he did not denounce Trump as he and many Republicans did in the aftermath of the attack. But a year on, the shock and revulsion have dissipated, and Trump remains the most powerful and popular figure in a Republican party, and questions about the legitimacy of Biden’s election have become a litmus test for candidates seeking the former president’s endorsement. Biden’s speech opened a day-long program of events on Capitol Hill to mark the anniversary.Throughout the day, members grew emotional as they recounted their memories of the insurrection – the sound of pounding fists at the door of the chamber, the whirring of the escape hoods, the shock of a Confederate flag in the hallowed halls.Others recounted quiet moments of grief and acts of heroism – the bravery of the police officers who defended the Capitol and the aides with the presence of mind to carry to safety the wooden boxes containing the electoral votes.Presiding over the House floor on Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that democracy had prevailed when members returned to the Capitol after the riot to ratify Biden’s electoral victory.“The Congress, because of the courage of all of you, rose to honor our oath and protect our democracy,” she said, before leading members – all Democrats with the exception of congresswoman Liz Cheney – in a moment of silence.Speaking just before Biden, vice-president Kamala Harris, a former California senator who was in the Capitol on 6 January last year, said the rioters not only defiled the building but assaulted “the institutions, the values, the ideals that generations of Americans have marched, picketed and shed blood to establish and defend”.In their comments, Harris and Biden called for the protection of voting rights. Harris urged lawmakers to pass the voting rights bills currently stalled before Congress.The insurrection was the last desperate attempt by Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election, after a series of legal challenges and a pressure campaign failed.On that day, a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol after Trump encouraged them to “fight like hell” as Congress convened to certify the election result. But lawmakers who had initially fled for their lives during the siege returned to the chamber, shaken but resolved, to make Trump’s electoral defeat official.In the year since the attack, elected officials, historians and democracy advocates have warned that the threat of future violence remains high. Trump and his allies have spent the past months rewriting the 6 history of January, downplaying the violence and shifting the blame.It was the the worst attack on the Capitol since it was burned by British forces in 1814.Much of Biden’s speech was devoted to establishing fact from fiction about the events of 6 January, as a revisionist history of the attack, promoted by Trump and his allies, takes root.“That’s what great nations do: they don’t bury the truth, they face up to it,” he said. “We must be absolutely clear about what is the truth and what is a lie.”“This wasn’t a group of tourists. This was an armed insurrection. They weren’t looking to uphold the will of the people, they were looking to deny the will of the people,” Biden said. All the while, Biden charged, Trump watched the violence unfold on TV from the private dining room near the Oval office. “He can’t accept that he lost.”TopicsUS Capitol attackJoe BidenDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More