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      Jan. 6, Part 3: The State of American Democracy

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      Rachel Quester and Robert Jimison and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn the United States, the transfer of power is built on the expectation that candidates and their allies follow the process peacefully and with a degree of grace.After the election on Nov. 3, 2020, peace and grace were not forthcoming from President Donald J. Trump’s side.Mr. Trump and his allies tested the limits of the election system, launching pressure and legal campaigns in competitive states to have votes overturned — all the while exposing the system’s precariousness.Although the efforts weren’t successful, they appear to have been only the beginning of a wider attack on American elections. In the final part of our Jan. 6 coverage, we explore the threats to democracy that may come to bear in the next election.On today’s episodeAlexander Burns, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.The Capitol Building at sunrise on Thursday, a year after the riot.Al Drago for The New York TimesBackground readingThe fight over American democracy and the fragility of good faith: Times political journalists talk about the Republicans’ push to restrict voting and seize control over elections, and how Democrats are responding.Here are four takeaways from the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Alexander Burns contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens and Rowan Niemisto.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda and Maddy Masiello. More

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      4 Takeaways From the Jan. 6 Capitol Attack Commemoration

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      WASHINGTON — This anniversary of Jan. 6 marked a turning point for President Biden, who for much of his first year in office avoided direct confrontation with his predecessor, Donald J. Trump.On Thursday, Mr. Biden took deliberate aim at Mr. Trump, assailing him for watching television as the attacks unfolded, spreading a lie that the 2020 election was rigged, and holding “a dagger at the throat of America” when he encouraged his supporters to attack the United States Capitol.But Mr. Biden held on to one vestige from the past year: He still refused to call Mr. Trump by name.Here are four takeaways from the day.Biden takes a new, confrontational approach to Trump.As president-elect in November 2020, Mr. Biden and his staff proceeded with the transition process by treating Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election as little more than histrionics.The calculation made back then by Mr. Biden and his advisers was that America was simply ready to move on, but on Thursday, the president was more willing than usual to address Mr. Trump’s claims, calling him a loser in the process.“He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president — defeated by a margin of over 7 million of your votes in a full and free and fair election,” Mr. Biden said. “There is simply zero proof the election results were inaccurate.”His remarks set him down a more confrontational path with Mr. Trump, who holds a firm grip on his party and shows no sign of backing down from continuing to perpetrate a false narrative about the 2020 election. It is a development Mr. Biden spent his first year in office avoiding, but one that he seemed to embrace as a matter of necessity on Thursday.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?Biden rejects working with Republicans who support ‘the rule of a single man.’On his Inauguration Day just under a year ago, Mr. Biden promised to be “a president for all Americans. I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.” On Thursday, he appeared not as the peacemaker president but as a leader who had a warning for Americans who attacked the Capitol in service of Mr. Trump.“I did not seek this fight brought to this Capitol one year ago today, but I will not shrink from it either,” Mr. Biden said. “I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation. And I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy.”Mr. Biden also reserved some of his ire for elected officials. For a leader who came into office speaking poetically about the art of bipartisanship — “politics is the art of the possible,” he said early on — and about the need to heal a fractured nation, Mr. Biden suggested that he was only interested in working with Republicans who have not tied their political fortunes to the falsehoods spread by Mr. Trump.“While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principles of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else,” Mr. Biden said. “But whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them to find shared solutions where possible.”Trump — and Trumpism — is not going away.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, center left, and Representative Matt Gaetz, center right, during a news conference in Washington on Thursday.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe president’s remarks presented a stark choice: “Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies?” In corners of the internet governed by Mr. Trump and his supporters, the answer seemed clear.On a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump aide who was indicted in November for failing to comply with congressional investigators, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia deflected blame for the attack and suggested it was part of a government conspiracy.In his own cascade of statements, Mr. Trump showed no sign that he was going to shrink from a fight. He assailed Mr. Biden for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and even the way he delivered his Thursday remarks.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      Biden’s Speech on the Jan. 6 Riot, Annotated

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      The president commemorated the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol with an emotional address forcefully denouncing his predecessor.President Biden gave the following address on Thursday to commemorate the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Here is a transcript of his remarks, with additional context.Madam Vice President, my fellow Americans: To state the obvious, one year ago today, in this sacred place, democracy was attacked — simply attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The Constitution — our Constitution — faced the gravest of threats.Outnumbered and in the face of a brutal attack, the Capitol Police, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, the National Guard and other brave law enforcement officials saved the rule of law.Our democracy held. We the people endured. And we the people prevailed.For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol.Katie Rogers, White House correspondentThis speech is a (rhetorical, at least) turning point for Mr. Biden, who for much of his first year in office avoided direct confrontation with his predecessor, Donald J. Trump. But today, without using Mr. Trump’s name, the president accused him of inciting a mob to save face after losing the presidential election right at the top of his remarks.But they failed. They failed.And on this day of remembrance, we must make sure that such an attack never, never happens again.I’m speaking to you today from Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. This is where the House of Representatives met for 50 years in the decades leading up to the Civil War. This is — on this floor is where a young congressman of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, sat at Desk 191.Katie RogersThis is a powerful backdrop for Mr. Biden, who served in the Senate for 36 years. The Capitol was Mr. Biden’s workplace for decades. In this moment, posed among the artifacts that tell the nation’s story, he is both president and tour guide.Above him — above us, over that door leading into the Rotunda — is a sculpture depicting Clio, the muse of history. In her hands, an open book in which she records the events taking place in this chamber below.Clio stood watch over this hall one year ago today, as she has for more than 200 years. She recorded what took place. The real history. The real facts. The real truth. The facts and the truth that Vice President Harris just shared and that you and I and the whole world saw with our own eyes.The Bible tells us that we shall know the truth, and the truth shall make us free. We shall know the truth.Katie RogersMr. Biden, who is Catholic, attends Mass about once a week. But he refers to the broader teachings of the Bible more often than he quotes Scripture.Well, here is the God’s truth about Jan. 6, 2021:Close your eyes. Go back to that day. What do you see? Rioters rampaging, waving for the first time inside this Capitol a Confederate flag that symbolized the cause to destroy America, to rip us apart.Even during the Civil War, that never, ever happened. But it happened here in 2021.What else do you see? A mob breaking windows, kicking in doors, breaching the Capitol. American flags on poles being used as weapons, as spears. Fire extinguishers being thrown at the heads of police officers.A crowd that professes their love for law enforcement assaulted those police officers, dragged them, sprayed them, stomped on them.Over 140 police officers were injured.We’ve all heard the police officers who were there that day testify to what happened. One officer called it, quote, a med- — “medieval” battle, and that he was more afraid that day than he was fighting the war in Iraq.They’ve repeatedly asked since that day: How dare anyone — anyone — diminish, belittle or deny the hell they were put through?We saw it with our own eyes. Rioters menaced these halls, threatening the life of the speaker of the House, literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America.But what did we not see?We didn’t see a former president, who had just rallied the mob to attack — sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, and the nation’s Capitol under siege.Katie RogersMr. Biden’s broadside here is a most likely reference to Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, who said this week that her committee had received “firsthand testimony” that Mr. Trump was indeed watching television as the attacks unfolded.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.They were looking to uphold — they weren’t looking to uphold a free and fair election. They were looking to overturn one.They weren’t looking to save the cause of America. They were looking to subvert the Constitution.This isn’t about being bogged down in the past. This is about making sure the past isn’t buried.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?That’s the only way forward. That’s what great nations do. They don’t bury the truth; they face up to it. Sounds like hyperbole, but that’s the truth: They face up to it.We are a great nation.My fellow Americans, in life, there’s truth and, tragically, there are lies — lies conceived and spread for profit and power.Katie RogersThe end of this passage here is repurposed from Mr. Biden’s inaugural address.We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie.And here is the truth: The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interests and America’s interests, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.Katie RogersMr. Biden’s remarks have set him down a more confrontational path with Mr. Trump, who holds a firm grip over the Republican Party and shows no sign of backing down from continuing to perpetuate lies about the 2020 election. (Mr. Trump released a wave of responses throughout the day on Thursday, calling Mr. Biden’s leadership into question and continuing to assert that the election was stolen from him.)He can’t accept he lost, even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: He lost.That’s what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward.He has done what no president in American history — the history of this country — has ever, ever done: He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people.While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principles of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party — the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes.But whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them to find shared solutions where possible. Because if we have a shared belief in democracy, then anything is possible — anything.Katie RogersMr. Biden, the consummate negotiator, has now made it clear that he is interested in working only with Republicans who have not tied their political fortunes to the falsehoods spread by Mr. Trump.And so, at this moment, we must decide: What kind of nation are we going to be?Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm?Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people?Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies?Katie RogersMr. Biden often warns that American democracy is nearing an inflection point, but these open questions betray a degree of uncertainty about the future of the country.We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation. The way forward is to recognize the truth and to live by it.The Big Lie being told by the former president and many Republicans who fear his wrath is that the insurrection in this country actually took place on Election Day — Nov. 3, 2020.Think about that. Is that what you thought? Is that what you thought when you voted that day? Taking part in an insurrection? Is that what you thought you were doing? Or did you think you were carrying out your highest duty as a citizen and voting?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 Jan. 6 as the true expression of the will of the people.Can you think of a more twisted way to look at this country — to look at America? I cannot.Katie RogersMr. Biden, who promised at his inauguration to be a president to all Americans, used this speech to castigate not only Mr. Trump, but also his supporters who stormed the Capitol. Asked later if his speech did more to divide than heal, Mr. Biden replied: “The way you have to heal, you have to recognize the extent of the wound. You can’t pretend. This is serious stuff.”Here’s the truth: The election of 2020 was the greatest demonstration of democracy in the history of this country.More of you voted in that election than have ever voted in all of American history. Over 150 million Americans went to the polls and voted that day in a pandemic — some at great risk to their lives. They should be applauded, not attacked.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.Instead of looking at the election results from 2020 and saying they need new ideas or better ideas to win more votes, the former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections.It’s wrong. It’s undemocratic. And frankly, it’s un-American.Katie RogersThese remarks most likely preface a Democratic-led push to force two voting rights bills through the Senate in the coming weeks. Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, immediately pounced when plans were announced this week, and have criticized Democrats for tying voting rights to the Jan. 6 anniversary. Mr. Biden will deliver remarks on voting rights in Atlanta next week.The second Big Lie being told by the former president and his supporters is that the results of the election of 2020 can’t be trusted.The truth is that no election — no election in American history has been more closely scrutinized or more carefully counted.Katie RogersThat’s true: Election officials and election security experts have reported no widespread instances of voter fraud in the 2020 election.Every legal challenge questioning the results in every court in this country that could have been made was made and was rejected — often rejected by Republican-appointed judges, including judges appointed by the former president himself, from state courts to the United States Supreme Court.Recounts were undertaken in state after state. Georgia — Georgia counted its results three times, with one recount by hand.Phony partisan audits were undertaken long after the election in several states. None changed the results. And in some of them, the irony is the margin of victory actually grew slightly.So, let’s speak plainly about what happened in 2020. Even before the first ballot was cast, the former president was preemptively sowing doubt about the election results. He built his lie over months. It wasn’t based on any facts. He was just looking for an excuse — a pretext — to cover for the truth.He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president — defeated by a margin of over seven million of your votes in a full and free and fair election.Katie RogersThe emphasis here on “defeated” is no doubt aimed at Mr. Trump’s near-compulsive penchant for calling people losers.There is simply zero proof the election results were inaccurate. In fact, in every venue where evidence had to be produced and an oath to tell the truth had to be taken, the former president failed to make his case.Just think about this: The former president and his supporters have never been able to explain how they accept as accurate the other election results that took place on Nov. 3 — the elections for governor, United States Senate, the House of Representatives — elections in which they closed the gap in the House.They challenge none of that. The president’s name was first, then we went down the line — governors, senators, House of Representatives. Somehow, those results were accurate on the same ballot, but the presidential race was flawed?And on the same ballot, the same day, cast by the same voters.The only difference: The former president didn’t lose those races; he just lost the one that was his own.Finally, the third Big Lie being told by a former president and his supporters is that the mob who sought to impose their will through violence are the nation’s true patriots.Is that what you thought when you looked at the mob ransacking the Capitol, destroying property, literally defecating in the hallways, rifling through desks of senators and representatives, hunting down members of Congress? Patriots? Not in my view.Katie RogersAgain, this sounds like Biden the senator talking. He has a reverence for the Capitol and the people who work there.To me, the true patriots were the more than 150 [million] Americans who peacefully expressed their vote at the ballot box, the election workers who protected the integrity of the vote, and the heroes who defended this Capitol.You can’t love your country only when you win.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      Democrats Are Failing to Defend Democracy

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      When it comes to elections, the Republican Party operates within a carapace of lies. So we rely on the Democrats to preserve our system of government.The problem is that Democrats live within their own insular echo chamber. Within that bubble convenient falsehoods spread, go unchallenged and make it harder to focus on the real crisis. So let’s clear away some of these myths that are distorting Democratic behavior:The whole electoral system is in crisis. Elections have three phases: registering and casting votes, counting votes and certifying results. When it comes to the first two phases, the American system has its flaws but is not in crisis. As Yuval Levin noted in The Times a few days ago, it’s become much easier in most places to register and vote than it was years ago. We just had a 2020 election with remarkably high turnout. The votes were counted with essentially zero fraud.The emergency is in the third phase — Republican efforts to overturn votes that have been counted. But Democratic voting bills — the For the People Act and its update, the Freedom to Vote Act — were not overhauled to address the threats that have been blindingly obvious since Jan. 6 last year. They are sprawling measures covering everything from mail-in ballots to campaign finance. They basically include every idea that’s been on activist agendas for years.These bills are hard to explain and hard to pass. By catering to D.C. interest groups, Democrats have spent a year distracting themselves from the emergency right in front of us.Voter suppression efforts are a major threat to democracy. Given the racial history of this country, efforts to limit voting, as some states have been implementing, are heinous. I get why Democrats want to repel them. But this, too, is not the major crisis facing us. That’s because tighter voting laws often don’t actually restrict voting all that much. Academics have studied this extensively. A recent well-researched study suggested that voter ID laws do not reduce turnout. States tighten or loosen their voting laws, often seemingly without a big effect on turnout. The general rule is that people who want to vote end up voting.Just as many efforts to limit the electorate don’t have much of an effect, the Democratic bills to make it easier to vote might not have much impact on turnout or on which party wins. As my Times colleague Nate Cohn wrote last April, “Expanding voting options to make it more convenient hasn’t seemed to have a huge effect on turnout or electoral outcomes. That’s the finding of decades of political science research on advance, early and absentee voting.”Higher turnout helps Democrats. This popular assumption is also false. Political scientists Daron R. Shaw and John R. Petrocik, authors of “The Turnout Myth,” looked at 70 years of election data and found “no evidence that turnout is correlated with partisan vote choice.”The best way to address the crisis is top down. Democrats have focused their energies in Washington, trying to pass these big bills. The bills would override state laws and dictate a lot of election procedures from the national level.Given how local Republicans are behaving, I understand why Democrats want to centralize things. But it’s a little weird to be arguing that in order to save democracy we have to take power away from local elected officials. Plus, if you tell local people they’re not fit to govern themselves, you’re going to further inflame the populist backlash.But the real problem is that Democrats are not focusing on crucial state and local arenas. The Times’s Charles Homans had a fascinating report from Pennsylvania, where Trump backers were running for local office, including judge of elections, while Democrats struggled to even find candidates. “I’m not sure what the Democratic Party was worried about, but it didn’t feel like they were worried about school board and judge of elections races — all of these little positions,” a failed Democratic candidate said.Democrats do not seem to be fighting hard in key local races. They do not seem to be rallying the masses so that state legislators pay a price if they support democracy-weakening legislation.Maybe some of the energy that has been spent over the past year analyzing and berating Joe Manchin could have been better spent grooming and supporting good state and local candidates. Maybe the best way to repulse a populist uprising is not by firing up all your allies in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C.The crisis of democracy is right in front of us. We have a massive populist mob that thinks the country is now controlled by a coastal progressive oligarchy that looks down on them. We’re caught in cycles of polarization that threaten to turn America into Northern Ireland during the Troubles. We have Republican hacks taking power away from the brave state officials who stood up to Trumpian bullying after the 2020 election.Democrats have spent too much time on measures that they mistakenly think would give them an advantage. The right response would be: Do the unsexy work at the local level, where things are in flux. Pass the parts of the Freedom to Vote Act that are germane, like the protections for elections officials against partisan removal, and measures to limit purging voter rolls. Reform the Electoral Count Act to prevent Congress from derailing election certifications.When your house is on fire, drop what you were doing, and put it out. Maybe finally Democrats will do that.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Jan. 6, Part 2: Liz Cheney’s Battle Against the ‘Big Lie’

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      Jessica Cheung, Rob Szypko, Rachel Quester and Chelsea Daniel and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThis episode contains strong language. On the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, when President Donald Trump went on the national mall to rally his supporters against the certification of Joe Biden’s election win, he called out a handful of Republicans by name. Politicians who had previously stood with him but were now rejecting his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Among those he mentioned was Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, then the No. 3 Republican in the House. Ms. Cheney was the only Republican leader telling Mr. Trump to move on from the election. A year later, while many in her party have backed down from their criticisms of the former president’s actions, she has remained steadfast — a conviction that has cost her leadership position.In the second part of our look at the legacy of the Capitol riot, we speak to Ms. Cheney about that day and its aftermath, her work with the Jan. 6 commission and the future of the Republican Party. “Right now, the Republican Party is allowing the toxin of Donald Trump, and what he did and his lies, to continue to infect the party and not standing up against it.”On today’s episodeRepresentative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and former No. 3 Republican in the House. “If you’re just going to get elected to office to say you’re in office, but when the chips are down you’re unwilling to do that you know is right, that creates the potential that the system can unravel,” Liz Cheney said on today’s episode.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBackground readingThe Jan. 6, 2021, assault has shaken the foundations of the Capitol, a symbol of American strength and unity, transforming how lawmakers view their surroundings and one another. A year after the Capitol riot, Donald Trump’s continued hold on the Republican Party shows, once again, that the former president can outlast almost any outrage cycle.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens and Rowan Niemisto.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda and Maddy Masiello. More

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      Republicans for Democracy

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      American democracy may depend on a conservative-liberal alliance.Liz Cheney opposes most abortions and most gun control. She favors tax cuts for the wealthy and expanded drilling for oil. The right-wing Family Research Council has given her voting record a perfect score. Her political hero is her hawkish father, who was the architect of the second Iraq War.This description may remind you why you loathe Cheney or have long admired her. Either way, it helps explain why she has become such an important figure for the future of American democracy.Today is the first anniversary of the violent attack on the Capitol, by a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters who were trying to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election. The mob smashed windows and threatened the vice president and members of Congress. Seven people died as a result of the attack, including three police officers.The Jan. 6 attack was part of a larger anti-democracy movement in the U.S. In the year since, the movement — which is closely aligned with the Republican Party — has changed some laws and ousted election officials, with the aim of overturning future results. The movement’s supporters justify these actions with lies about voter fraud.Encouraged by Trump, other Republican politicians and conservative media stars, the anti-democratic movement is following a playbook used by authoritarians in other countries, both recently and historically. The movement is trying to use existing democratic laws — on vote counting and election certification, for example — to unravel democracy.“We are in a terrible situation in which one of two major parties is no longer committed to playing by democratic rules,” Steven Levitsky — a political scientist and co-author of “How Democracies Die” with his Harvard colleague Daniel Ziblatt — told me. “No other established Western democracy faces such a threat today, not this acutely anyway.”(Related: “I fear for our democracy,” former President Jimmy Carter writes in Times Opinion.)The experience of other countries does offer some lessons about how to defeat anti-democratic movements. The most successful approach involves building coalitions of people who disagree, often vehemently, on many issues but who all believe in democracy.As Ziblatt wrote to me this week:A classic dilemma of democracy, going back to the mid-20th century, is how to respond to a political party that uses democracy’s very openness to gain power and attack democracy. One response that has worked in the past in other countries in the 1930s (e.g. Belgium, Finland) that have overcome this dilemma is for broadly small-d democratic parties, even with big ideological differences, to overlook their differences in the short run to contain autocratic leaders or parties. Big coalitions are often necessary in the short run.Trump supporters attacking the Capitol a year ago.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesRepublican democratsThis is why Cheney and the rare other elected Republicans combating Trump’s “big lie” are so important. (Here’s a look at the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last year.) If the fate of American democracy becomes a partisan contest between Democrats and Republicans, democracy could lose.In our closely divided and highly polarized country, each party is likely to hold power at some point in coming years. But when the Republican Party does, it may change the rules to ensure that it remains in power, as Trump tried in 2020 and as Viktor Orban has done in Hungary.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?Only a cross-ideological coalition is likely to prove strong enough to prevent this outcome. A coalition makes it easier for Republican officials across the country to beat back future attempts to overturn elections; when the Cheney family is standing up for democracy, it does not look like just another liberal position.A broad coalition can also win more votes, keeping anti-democratic politicians out of power. Levitsky is alarmed enough that he believes the authoritarian threat should shape the Democrats’ 2024 campaign strategy, and perhaps its presidential and vice-presidential nominees. Once the authoritarian threat has receded, Americans can focus on their other disagreements, he argues:There is obviously no easy way out, but in my view the Democrats need to work to forge a broader (small-d) democratic coalition that explicitly and publicly includes all small-d democratic Republicans. This means Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, the Bush establishment network and other conservatives (as well as major business leaders and Christian leaders) need to publicly join and support a fusion ticket with the Democratic Party.I know that many Democrats will recoil at this idea. Some anti-Trump Republicans will, too. It has real downsides and could forestall progress on other important issues, starting with climate change. I also know that some progressives believe that Liz Cheney and her father have helped create the radicalized Republican Party and are themselves part of the problem with American democracy.But whatever you think of their policy views, that last claim strikes me as inconsistent with American history. Opposing abortion, gun control and environmental regulation is well within the bounds of this country’s democratic traditions. So is — uncomfortable as this may be to acknowledge — starting a disastrous foreign war, as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did in Iraq, or playing hardball over vote counting, as they did in Florida in 2000. Democratic presidents have done those things, too.Violently attacking the Capitol is not consistent with American democratic traditions. Nor is trying to airbrush the horror of that attack, as many top Republican officials have. Nor are flamboyant, repeated lies about election results — and promises to act on those lies in the future.“The vast majority of Americans — Republicans and Democrats — want to live in a country that continues to be characterized by the freedoms that we enjoy and that they are fundamentally faithful to the Constitution,” Cheney told “The Daily.” “It’s a dangerous moment. The stakes are really high.”You can listen to Cheney’s interview with my colleague Michael Barbaro here.More on Jan. 6A year after the attack, Trump remains the G.O.P.’s dominant figure.Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general, vowed to hold the perpetrators of the attack “at any level” accountable.The House committee investigating the attack aims to release a final report by November.The attack casts a pall over Congress, Carl Hulse writes. Staff members are frightened to go to work, and lawmakers are checked for weapons.FiveThirtyEight’s Alex Samuels wrote about the noose, Confederate flag and other symbols of white supremacy at the riot.Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, spoke to NPR’s Terry Gross about losing his son to suicide days before the attack.“The Argument” podcast asks if America is sliding toward authoritarianism.THE LATEST NEWSThe VirusGetting a Pfizer shot at a school in the Bronx last year.James Estrin/The New York TimesThe C.D.C. recommended boosters of the Pfizer vaccine for children 12 and up.A White House official said Americans could start getting reimbursed for at-home Covid tests next week.A study found that some rapid tests failed to detect Omicron cases early in an infection.Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said he wanted to antagonize the unvaccinated, including by barring them from public places.Australia told Novak Djokovic to leave the country, rejecting his vaccine exemption for the Australian Open. He has appealed the decision.Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival street parties have been called off again, and the Grammys have been postponed.Other Big StoriesA fire official said 26 people were in the three-story home.Alejandro A. Alvarez/The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Associated PressA house fire in Philadelphia killed 12 people, including eight children.Among the proposals in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s first State of the State address: building a Brooklyn-Queens transit link and legalizing drinks to go.A Russian-led alliance has sent troops into Kazakhstan to quash protests against the country’s authoritarian government. (Here’s how they started.)The F.B.I. arrested a man accused of tricking authors into sending him unpublished manuscripts.OpinionsThe Omicron wave will be different. These charts show how.Women are told pregnancy gets riskier after 35, but there’s nothing magical about that age, says Jessica Grose.MORNING READSRyan Kaji on the set of “Ryan’s Mystery Playdate.”Ilona Szwarc for The New York TimesBoy King of YouTube: A family has turned toy videos into a multimillion-dollar empire.Be prepared: How to stay safe if you’re trapped in your car during a snowstorm.Advice from Wirecutter: Christmas decorations still up? Here’s how to store them.‘85 and up’: At the end of a long life, what matters, and what is noise?Lives Lived: William Ellinghaus led AT&T at the height of its power and presided over its breakup in the early 1980s. He also helped save New York City from default. Ellinghaus died at 99.ARTS AND IDEAS A partial solar eclipse over New York City last year.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockThe year in spaceSave the date: The James Webb Space Telescope, a modern successor to the Hubble, is set to finish unfolding its massive mirrors in the coming days. Its mission is to peer deeper into space than ever before, in search of light that has been traveling toward us since just after the Big Bang.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      Christian Nationalism Is One of Trump’s Most Powerful Weapons

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      This article is part of a collection on the events of Jan. 6, one year later. Read more in a note from Times Opinion’s politics editor Ezekiel Kweku in our Opinion Today newsletter.The most serious attempt to overthrow the American constitutional system since the Civil War would not have been feasible without the influence of America’s Christian nationalist movement. One year later, the movement seems to have learned a lesson: If it tries harder next time, it may well succeed in making the promise of American democracy a relic of the past.Christian nationalist symbolism was all over the events of Jan. 6, as observers have pointed out. But the movement’s contribution to the effort to overturn the 2020 election and install an unelected president goes much deeper than the activities of a few of its representatives on the day that marks the unsuccessful end (or at least a temporary setback) of an attempted coup.A critical precondition for Donald Trump’s attempt to retain the presidency against the will of the people was the cultivation of a substantial population of voters prepared to believe his fraudulent claim that the election was stolen — a line of argument Mr. Trump began preparing well before the election, at the first presidential debate.The role of social and right-wing media in priming the base for the claim that the election was fraudulent is by now well understood. The role of the faith-based messaging sphere is less well appreciated. Pastors, congregations and the religious media are among the most trusted sources of information for many voters. Christian nationalist leaders have established richly funded national organizations and initiatives to exploit this fact. The repeated message that they sought to deliver through these channels is that outside sources of information are simply not credible. The creation of an information bubble, impervious to correction, was the first prerequisite of Mr. Trump’s claim.The coup attempt also would not have been possible without the unshakable sense of persecution that movement leaders have cultivated among the same base of voters. Christian nationalism today begins with the conviction that conservative Christians are the most oppressed group in American society. Among leaders of the movement, it is a matter of routine to hear talk that they are engaged in a “battle against tyranny,” and that the Bible may soon be outlawed.A final precondition for the coup attempt was the belief, among the target population, that the legitimacy of the United States government derives from its commitment to a particular religious and cultural heritage, and not from its democratic form. It is astonishing to many that the leaders of the Jan. 6 attack on the constitutional electoral process styled themselves as “patriots.” But it makes a glimmer of sense once you understand that their allegiance is to a belief in blood, earth and religion, rather than to the mere idea of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”Given the movement’s role in laying the groundwork for the coup attempt, its leaders faced a quandary when Mr. Trump began to push his repeatedly disproven claims — and that quandary turned into a test of character on Jan. 6. Would they go along with an attempt to overthrow America’s democratic system?Some attempted to rewrite the facts about Jan. 6. The former Republican Representative Michele Bachmann suggested the riot was the work of “paid rabble rousers,” while the activist and author Lance Wallnau, who has praised Mr. Trump as “God’s chaos candidate,” blamed “the local antifa mob.” Many leaders, like Charlie Kirk, appeared to endorse Mr. Trump’s claims about a fraudulent election. Others, like Michael Farris, president and chief executive of the religious right legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, provided indirect but no less valuable support by concern-trolling about supposed “constitutional irregularities” in battleground states.None appeared willing to condemn Mr. Trump for organizing an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden. On the contrary, the Rev. Franklin Graham, writing on Facebook, condemned “these ten” from Mr. Trump’s “own party” who voted to impeach him and mused, “It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”At Christian nationalist conferences I have been reporting on, I have heard speakers go out of their way to defend and even lionize the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. At the Road to Majority conference, which was held in Central Florida in June 2021, the author and radio host Eric Metaxas said, “The reason I think we are being so persecuted, why the Jan. 6 folks are being persecuted, when you’re over the target like that, oh my.” At that same conference, the political commentator Dinesh D’Souza, in conversation with the religious right strategist Ralph Reed, said, “The people who are really getting shafted right now are the Jan. 6 protesters,” before adding, “We won’t defend our guys even when they’re good guys.” Mr. Reed nodded in response and replied, “I think Donald Trump taught our movement a lot.”Movement leaders now appear to be working to prime the base for the next attempt to subvert the electoral process. At dozens of conservative churches in swing states this past year, groups of pastors were treated to presentations by an initiative called Faith Wins. Featuring speakers like David Barton, a key figure in the fabrication of Christian nationalist myths about history, and led by Chad Connelly, a Republican political veteran, Faith Wins serves up elections skepticism while demanding that pastors mobilize their flocks to vote “biblical” values. “Every pastor you know needs to make sure 100 percent of the people in their pews are voting, and voting biblical values,” Mr. Connelly told the assembled pastors at a Faith Wins event in Chantilly, Va. in September.“The church is not a cruise ship, the church is a battleship,” added Byron Foxx, an evangelist touring with Faith Wins. The Faith Wins team also had at its side Hogan Gidley, a deputy press secretary in the Trump White House, who now runs the Center for Election Integrity, an initiative of the America First Policy Institute, a group led in part by former members of the Trump administration. Mr. Gidley informed the gathering that his group is “nonpartisan” — and then went on to mention that in the last election cycle there were “A lot of rogue secretaries of state, a lot of rogue governors.”He was presumably referring to Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia who earned the ire of Trumpists by rebuffing the former president’s request to find him an additional 11,780 votes. “You saw the stuff in Arizona, you’re going to see more stuff in Wisconsin, these are significant issues, and we can’t be dismissed out of hand anymore, the facts are too glaring,” Mr. Gidley said. In fact, the Republican-backed audit of votes in Arizona’s largest county confirmed that President Biden won Arizona by more votes than previously thought. But the persecution narrative is too politically useful to discard simply because it’s not true.Even as movement leaders are preparing for a possible restoration of a Trumpist regime — a period they continue to regard as a golden age in retrospect — they are advancing in parallel on closely related fronts. Among the most important of these has to do with public education.In the panic arising out of the claim that America’s schools are indoctrinating young children in critical race theory, or C.R.T., it isn’t hard to detect the ritualized workings of the same information bubble, persecution complex and sense of entitlement that powered the coup attempt. Whatever you make of the new efforts in state legislatures to impose new “anti-C.R.T.” restrictions on speech and teaching in public schools, the more important consequence is to extend the religious right’s longstanding program to undermine confidence in public education, an effort that religious right leaders see as essential both for the movement’s long-term funding prospects and for its antidemocratic agenda.Opposition to public education is part of the DNA of America’s religious right. The movement came together in the 1970s not solely around abortion politics, as later mythmakers would have it, but around the outrage of the I.R.S. threatening to take away the tax-exempt status of church-led “segregation academies.” In 1979, Jerry Falwell said he hoped to see the day when there wouldn’t be “any public schools — the churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them.”Today, movement leaders have their eye on the approximately $700 billion that federal, state, and local governments spend yearly on education. The case of Carson v. Makin, which is before the Supreme Court this term and involves a challenge, in Maine, to prohibitions on using state tuition aid to attend religious schools, could force taxpayers to fund sectarian schools no matter how discriminatory their policies or fanatical their teachings. The endgame is to get a chunk of this money with the help either of state legislatures or the Supreme Court, which in its current configuration might well be convinced that religious schools have a right to taxpayer funds.This longstanding anti-public school agenda is the driving force behind the movement’s effort to orchestrate the anti-C.R.T. campaign. The small explosions of hate detonating in public school boards across the nation are not entirely coming from the grass roots up. The Family Research Council, a Washington, D.C.-based Christian right policy group, recently held an online School Board Boot Camp, a four-hour training session providing instruction on how to run for school boards and against C.R.T. and to recruit others to do so. The Bradley Foundation, Heritage Action for America, and The Manhattan Institute are among those providing support for groups on the forefront of the latest public school culture wars.A decade ago, the radical aims at the ideological core of the Christian nationalist movement were there to see for anybody who looked. Not many bothered to look, and those who did were often dismissed as alarmist. More important, most Republican Party leaders at the time distanced themselves from theocratic extremists. They avoided the rhetoric of Seven Mountains dominionism, an ideology that calls explicitly for the domination of the seven “peaks” of modern civilization (including government and education) by Christians of the correct, supposedly biblical variety.What a difference a decade makes. National organizations like the Faith & Freedom Coalition and the Ziklag Group, which bring together prominent Republican leaders with donors and religious right activists, feature “Seven Mountains” workshops and panels at their gatherings. Nationalist leaders and their political dependents in the Republican Party now state quite openly what before they whispered to one another over their prayer breakfasts. Whether the public will take notice remains to be seen.Katherine Stewart (@kathsstewart) is the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.”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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Jimmy Carter: I Fear for Our Democracy

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      One year ago, a violent mob, guided by unscrupulous politicians, stormed the Capitol and almost succeeded in preventing the democratic transfer of power. All four of us former presidents condemned their actions and affirmed the legitimacy of the 2020 election. There followed a brief hope that the insurrection would shock the nation into addressing the toxic polarization that threatens our democracy.However, one year on, promoters of the lie that the election was stolen have taken over one political party and stoked distrust in our electoral systems. These forces exert power and influence through relentless disinformation, which continues to turn Americans against Americans. According to the Survey Center on American Life, 36 percent of Americans — almost 100 million adults across the political spectrum — agree that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” The Washington Post recently reported that roughly 40 percent of Republicans believe that violent action against the government is sometimes justified.Politicians in my home state of Georgia, as well as in others, such as Texas and Florida, have leveraged the distrust they have created to enact laws that empower partisan legislatures to intervene in election processes. They seek to win by any means, and many Americans are being persuaded to think and act likewise, threatening to collapse the foundations of our security and democracy with breathtaking speed. I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally — the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power — has become dangerously fragile at home. More