Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Biden’s Honeymoon Is Over, and He Knows It

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      The first seven months of the Biden presidency have been easy compared with what’s coming down the pike.Key provisions of Covid relief legislation came to an end on Aug. 1, with more set to follow — including a cessation of moratoriums on evictions and mortgage foreclosures, termination of extended unemployment benefits (which carried $300-a-week supplemental payments) and a stop to enhanced food stamp subsidies and student loan forbearance.The prospect of millions of families forced from their homes as Covid variants infect growing numbers of people provoked frenzied attempts by the White House and congressional Democrats to take emergency steps to halt or ameliorate the potential chaos and a possible tragedy of national proportions.On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered a 60-day freeze on evictions — although the order faces possible rejection by the courts.“Any call for a moratorium, based on the Supreme Court’s recent decision, is likely to face obstacles,” Biden told reporters, adding that the “bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.”In a June report, the Census Bureau found that 1,401,801 people 18 and older living in rental housing were “very likely” to be evicted and 2,248,120 were “somewhat likely.” In addition, 345,556 people were “very likely” to lose their homes through mortgage foreclosure, and 746,030 were “somewhat likely” to face foreclosure and the loss of their homes. The combined total was 4.7 million adults.The eviction crisis has come at a time when an additional series of potentially damaging developments have come to the fore.The rate of inflation has been rising at its fastest pace in over a decade — to 5.4 percent in June, from 1.4 percent in January when Biden took office, with no end in sight. The number of homicides grew by 25 percent from 2019 to 2020, and the 2021 rate, 6.2 homicides per 100,000 residents, is on track to become, according to The Washington Post, “the highest recorded in the United States in more than 20 years.”The number of illegal border crossings has more than doubled during Biden’s seven months in office, raising the potential for immigration to become a central campaign issue once again, both next year and in 2024.U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that in June of this year the enforcement agency “encountered 188,829 persons attempting entry along the Southwest Border,” a 142 percent increase from the 78,000 in January 2021 when Biden assumed the presidency.As the 2022 and 2024 elections get closer, Biden is in a race to keep public attention on policies and initiatives favorable to the Democratic Party and its candidates against the continuing threat that inflation, crime, urban disorder and illegal immigration — all issues that favor the Republican Party — take center stage.The danger for Biden if crime and immigration become a primary focus of public attention is clear in polling data. The RealClearPolitics average of the eight most recent polls shows Biden’s favorability at plus 7.5 points (51.1 positive and 43.6 negative) and that the public generally approves of his handling of the Covid pandemic, of jobs, of the economy and of the environment.Regarding Biden’s handling of crime and immigration, however, the numbers go negative. In the July 17-20 Economist/YouGov Poll, 38 percent of voters approved of his handling of crime, and 45 percent disapproved. In the Economist/YouGov poll taken a week later, Biden’s numbers on immigration were worse: 35 approving, 50 disapproving.The Biden administration has initiated a set of programs designed to “stem the flow of guns into the hands of those responsible for violence” — the centerpiece of its anti-crime program — but the Economist/YouGov poll found in its July 24-27 survey that 30 percent of voters approve of Biden’s handling of gun issues while 48 percent disapproveWhat does this all portend? Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, replied by email to my inquiry:The Biden administration has done a good job so far avoiding hard-to-defend, controversial positions on Republican hot button issues. That is really all they need to do. It is more likely that Covid and economic conditions will matter more in determining the Democratic Party’s fate in November.Cain argues thatthe best defense for the Democrats is to go on the offense in 2022 and remind voters about who Trump is and what the Republican Party has become. The resistance to supporting vaccination among Trumpist Republican officials could hurt the party’s national image substantially in 2022 if the unvaccinated are to blame for our inability to put this issue behind us.Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, has a very different take. In an email he wrote:The Democrats have lost a great deal of credibility when it comes to crime and policing by thoughtlessly adopting slogans like ‘defund the police’ without considering what the phrase means, how policies based on the idea might lead to surges in crime, or how the slogan might backfire in the face of rising crime and lawlessness.Biden, Westwood continued,was smart to distance himself from these factions, but many of those he needs in Congress and in state houses have been much less careful. Without a serious repositioning on criminal justice policies, the Democrats face the midterms with a gaping self-inflicted wound.Biden received a lift last week in keeping a bread-and-butter agenda front and center from an unexpected source, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. McConnell abandoned his Dr. No stance toward all things Democratic and joined 16 fellow Republicans in support of a key motion to take up a $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill. If enacted into law, the measure would legitimize Biden’s claim that he is capable of restoring a semblance of bipartisanship in the nation’s capital.McConnell has not fully explained his political reasoning, but his tactical shift suggests that he thinks the wind remains at Biden’s back, making the Republican strategy of destruction a much riskier proposition, at least for the moment.Early indicators suggest that in some ways Biden has yet to face the kind of voter opposition that characterized the administrations of his predecessors from both parties at this stage in their presidencies.Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State, tweeted on Aug. 2:Still no sign of strong grassroots or conservative media opposition focused on Biden or congressional agenda At this point in Obama admin, it was clear August congressional recess would be full of boisterous town halls. Infrastructure doesn’t get base animated.Similarly, G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist for The Economist, wrote on Aug. 1 that there is a long-term “trend by which the people react in a thermostatic manner against the party in power,” with the public mood shifting to the right during Democratic presidencies and to the left during Republican presidencies.So far during the Biden presidency, Morris wrote, the expected tilt toward conservatism has not materialized:Where we go from here is a big question. As stated, the thermostatic model would predict a reversion in 2021 in the conservative direction. But the issue remains open; the public has not appeared very thermostatic on, say, immigration policy over the last year, and their demand for public spending is still very high.The trickiest issues facing the Biden administration are crime and urban disorder because these are issues that play to the advantage of conservatives, who have demonstrated expertise in weaponizing them.The June 29-July 6 USA Today/Ipsos poll found that “concerns about crime and gun violence have surged to the top of issues that worry Americans” and, in an ominous note for the Biden administration,Crime and public safety is the issue on which the Republican Party now holds its strongest advantage. By 32 percent to 24 percent, those polled said the G.O.P. was better at handling crime.There is considerable disagreement over the optimal strategy for Democrats to adopt when addressing crime — along with widespread concern over the party’s credibility on the issue itself.Rebecca Goldstein, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, emailed to say that she believes “the Biden Administration has correctly read the political winds by doubling the amount they are requesting for police hiring grants in 2022 compared to the 2021 appropriation, and also requesting eight-figure sums for police training and body-worn cameras.”These initiatives, Goldstein continued, are “not the outcome that any of last summer’s activists would have wanted. But the Biden Administration has realized that some of those proposals, particularly defunding or abolishing police agencies, were politically dead on arrival.”The crucial question, in Goldstein’s view, iswhether the administration will be able to convincingly advertise its support for police, and for police oversight and reform, while neither alienating some of the activists who mobilized to help Biden win in 2020 and might be put off from putting in the same sweat equity in 2022 or 2024, nor succumbing to the longstanding critique from the right that Democrats are “soft on crime.” This is a tightrope that even the most skilled politician might not be able to walk.Stanley Feldman, a political scientist at Stony Brook University, argued in an email that trying to engage voters on crime and other issues that have worked to the advantage of the Republican Party in the past is a fool’s errand:The Democratic Party has been losing voters who want economic benefits from the federal government but who are supporting Republican candidates because of their conservative positions on social and cultural issues. Biden can’t win back voters by engaging on these issues. Any positions he takes will raise the salience of these issues and that’s not helpful for him.Crime and policing, Feldman noted,are largely local concerns. Immigration is a potential minefield so the best he can do is to try to keep it from becoming a major media story. Given his limited options, any attempt to address these concerns would just give Republicans an opportunity to portray him in an unfavorable light. Providing concrete economic benefits to people while reducing the volume on social/cultural issues is the best way forward in 2022 and 2024.Aaron Chalfin, a professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, agrees that engaging the debate over crime is inherently risky for Democrats:In my view, the political liabilities for the Democrats are probably fairly substantial. The surge in violence is rapid and has reversed 20 years of progress in just 18 short months. While I think the cause of the violence has little to do with Democratic political priorities at the national level, it seems likely that the Democrats will be held to account given the rhetoric around “Defund” that is associated with the left wing of the party.Lawrence Sherman, director of the Cambridge Center for Evidence-Based Policing at the University of Cambridge, agrees that “the greatest threat to Biden on policing and disorder comes from the left,” but he differs from some of his colleagues in arguing that Biden should take the issues of crime and urban dysfunction head on.Sherman contends that public anxieties over crime are just one part of a larger, more comprehensive “fear of chaos.” In that more expansive context, Sherman continued, Biden has strengthened his credentials as an adversary of disorder through his workon Covid and the economy, for which his competence grows more impressive daily in comparison to Trump’s. Climate change will also become a bigger issue (favoring Biden) for the swing vote, with smoke, heat and floods proving more scary than an unprecedented spike in murders. In a politics of fear, the targets of fear become identified with different candidates, and Biden’s fears now seem paramount: Covid, Climate and Chaos.Trump’s actions leading up to and during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by Trump loyalists seeking to disrupt the vote count have opened the door for Biden to take the initiative on law and order and, in doing so, to counter the image of the Democratic Party as soft on crime, Sherman argued:“After what Trump did on Jan. 6, Biden has been able to stress his own historic support for the police as emblematic of his opposition to chaos,” Sherman wrote in an email:The “defund the police” movement probably did help to lose Dem seats in the House in 2020, and may increasingly be blamed for the huge spike in violent crime. But as long as Biden remains strong in his position that policing “works” to prevent crime, and that it is essential to saving Black lives, he will attract the suburban swing vote.Biden should take the initiative, Sherman argues, with “a major policing initiative,” and that initiative should stress “hot spots policing,” the focusing of police resources on small sections of urban areas, “under 5 percent of land in most cities,” while “pulling way back on stop and frisk everywhere else, especially suburban traffic stops, like the late Sandra Bland.”Biden goes into battle with one crucial advantage: He, his appointees and his advisers have more experience in the trenches of elections, legislative fights and bureaucratic maneuvering than the top personnel of any recent administration.On the other hand, if what his voters need is equality — that is, resource redistribution — experienced advisers may not be enough.Mart Trasberg and Hector Bahamonde, of Wake Forest University and the Universidad de O’Higgins in Chile, authors of “Inclusive institutions, unequal outcomes: Democracy, state capacity, and income inequality,” pointed out in an email that redistribution is exceptionally hard to achieve in an advanced democracy like the one in operation in the United States:The increase in inequality through market processes puts pressure on fiscal policy, making it difficult to increase redistribution via taxes and transfers. With increasing foreign investment flows and more developed financial sectors, domestic and international corporate and financial elites become stronger actors in domestic politics. Given that these changes are slow-moving and incremental, disorganized voters are not able to vote for a higher taxation of income-concentrating elites. Of course, other mechanisms are likely at play: political elites trick voters to vote on identity issues that do not concern socio-economic redistribution.In the end, much of the dynamism that powers today’s political competition comes back to — or down to — racial and cultural conflict. Can Biden find a redistributive workaround — and protect voting rights at the same time? The fate of the Democratic Party depends on it.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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      Just Because Trump Is Ridiculous, It Doesn’t Mean He Isn’t Dangerous

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      It may well be that “real” authoritarians don’t actually lose elections. But at this point in time, we can safely say that there’s no question that Donald Trump was determined to overturn the 2020 presidential election and end American constitutional government in order to stay in office.According to my colleague Katie Benner, reporting for The Times, Trump repeatedly pressured the Justice Department to “just say the election was corrupt” and “leave the rest to me” so that “he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results,” as indicated in notes taken by Richard Donoghue, who was then the acting deputy attorney general.As with the entire effort to overturn the results of the election, Trump’s behavior was as clumsy as it was in earnest. He truly wanted the Justice Department to give him a pretext for some kind of (presumably drastic) action, but the most he could do in pursuit of this goal was to complain to top officials on the phone. “The conversations often included complaints about unfounded voter fraud conspiracy theories,” Benner notes, “and admonishments that department leaders had failed to fight hard enough for Mr. Trump, the officials said.”But a haphazard attempt is still an attempt. That Trump is an absurd figure does not mean we should treat his drives and desires as unthreatening. This was true when he was in office, and it is true now, while he is still trying to “stop the steal.”The plot that began the night of the election when Trump demanded that the states stop counting ballots — “We want all voting to stop” — has not actually come to an end. It is continuing, pushed forward by the former president and his allies in and out of government. And the current narrative behind the plot — that Trump is the rightful president, that Biden stole the election and that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a righteous rebellion against Democratic fraud and subversion — has all but migrated into the Republican Party mainstream.For a clear picture of the former president’s influence on the Republican Party, look no further than the effort to investigate the attack on the Capitol. Republican leaders in the House and Senate opposed and then killed a bipartisan Sept. 11-style commission to study the events of Jan. 6, on the grounds that it would be a “purely political exercise,” as Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, put it.When, in response, House Democrats announced a select committee to investigate the attack (under the direct control of Speaker Nancy Pelosi), House Republican leaders were furious. “This select committee is likely to pursue a partisan agenda to politicize the Jan. 6 attack instead of conducting a good faith investigative effort into the actions leading up to and the security failures of the 6th,” Steve Scalise, the House minority whip, said.Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, was given a chance to appoint Republican representatives to the select committee. He chose members known for their total devotion to Trump, like Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana, who both refused to certify the election results in January and signed a brief to the Supreme Court asking the justices to overturn the presidential results. Pelosi removed Jordan and Banks from the commission, bringing on another round of outrage and partisan blowback.In short, Republican leaders have refused to commit to an actual investigation of the storming of the Capitol. The reason is simple: Trump has made cooperation grounds for expulsion from the party. The virtual pariah status of Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — the two Republican members Pelosi named to the commission — is proof enough.But events in Washington are not the only evidence of how Trump’s obsessions have become the obsessions of much of the Republican Party. Republican voters themselves are all-in on the former president’s message. Fifty-three percent of Republicans view Trump as the true president, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in May, and about half of Republicans believe the Capitol attack was the work of left-wing activists “trying to make Trump look bad,” according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in March.At the state level, Republican lawmakers and conservative activists are fighting to engineer a pretext for “stop the steal” ahead of the 2022 and 2024 elections. In Arizona, this has taken the form of an “audit” of the 2020 vote organized by the state Republican Party.It would be easy to dismiss the Arizona audit as a joke, a parade of clownish incompetence not unlike the efforts of Trump in the aftermath of the election. According to The Associated Press, the company hired to conduct the audit had no prior experience with elections, broke rules for handling ballots and took nearly twice the allotted time to complete the process.What’s more, its owner has supported the former president’s efforts to spread false conspiracy theories about the election. Trump, for his part, has endorsed the audit, praising its organizers in a speech in Arizona last week. “We’re gathered here in Phoenix to show our support for election integrity and for the brave and unyielding conservative warriors in the Arizona State Senate,” he said.The audit has encouraged other Republicans in other 2020 battleground states to attempt similar shenanigans, part of a national strategy to delegitimize last year’s election results. As Jane Mayer recently described in great detail in The New Yorker, there is a network of conservative groups spending millions to promote “election integrity” and bolster Republican efforts to change state election laws.It is not hard to see the endgame here, especially if Trump makes another bid for the White House after capturing the Republican nomination for a third time. Not an after-the-fact fight to “stop the steal,” but a pre-emptive attempt to make sure the election can’t be “stolen” — that is, won — by his opponent.The American political system is barreling toward another crisis. Of course there’s no guarantee that the crisis will happen. But the current complacency coming from much of the political establishment does not leave one confident that we’ll avoid it.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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      Already Distorting Jan. 6, G.O.P. Now Concocts Entire Counter-Narrative

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      A new version of the attack amounts to a disinformation campaign aimed at giving cover to the party and intensifying the threats to political accountability.In the hours and days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, rattled Republican lawmakers knew exactly who was to blame: Donald J. Trump. Loyal allies began turning on him. Top Republicans vowed to make a full break from his divisive tactics and dishonesties. Some even discussed removing him from office.By spring, however, after nearly 200 congressional Republicans had voted to clear Mr. Trump during a second impeachment proceeding, the conservative fringes of the party had already begun to rewrite history, describing the Capitol riot as a peaceful protest and comparing the invading mob to a “normal tourist visit,” as one congressman put it.This past week, amid the emotional testimony of police officers at the first hearing of a House select committee, Republicans completed their journey through the looking-glass, spinning a new counternarrative of that deadly day. No longer content to absolve Mr. Trump, they concocted a version of events in which accused rioters were patriotic political prisoners and Speaker Nancy Pelosi was to blame for the violence.Their new claims, some voiced from the highest levels of House Republican leadership, amount to a disinformation campaign being promulgated from the steps of the Capitol, aimed at giving cover to their party and intensifying the threats to political accountability.This rendering of events — together with new evidence that Mr. Trump had counted on allies in Congress to help him use a baseless allegation of corruption to overturn the election — pointed to what some democracy experts see as a dangerous new sign in American politics: Even with Mr. Trump gone from the White House, many Republicans have little intention of abandoning the prevarication that was a hallmark of his presidency.Rather, as the country struggles with the consequences of Mr. Trump’s assault on the legitimacy of the nation’s elections, leaders of his party — who, unlike the former president, have not lost their political or rhetorical platforms — are signaling their willingness to continue, look past or even expand his assault on the facts for political gain.The phenomenon is not uniquely American.“This is happening all over the place — it is so much linked to the democratic backsliding and rising of authoritarian movements,” said Laura Thornton, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It’s about the same sort of post-truth world. You can just repeat a lie over and over and, because there’s so little trust, people will believe it.”Behind the Republican embrace of disinformation is a calculus of both ambition and self-preservation. With members of the select committee hinting that they could subpoena Trump aides, allies on Capitol Hill and perhaps Mr. Trump himself, the counterfactual counterattack could pre-emptively undercut an investigation of the riot.As videos shown during the hearing gave harrowing new reminders of the day’s violence, leading House Republicans claimed that Ms. Pelosi — a target of the mob — had been warned about the violence in advance but failed to prevent it.From his private club in New Jersey, Mr. Trump suggested that Ms. Pelosi should “investigate herself,” yet again falsely insinuating that antifa and Black Lives Matter — not his followers — caused the destruction on Jan. 6 and that a democratically decided election had been stolen from him.All the while, in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican, who once led his party in condemning both the riot and Mr. Trump’s role in it, made no visible attempt to stop the flood of fabrications, telling reporters he had not watched the hearing and had little new to say about the most violent attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.House Republicans’ desire to bury the attack on their own workplace has created a dysfunctional governing atmosphere. Ms. Pelosi has increasingly treated them as a pariah party, unworthy of collaboration or trust, and has expressed deep disdain for Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, whom she called a “moron” this past week.A six-month Times investigation has synchronized and mapped out thousands of videos and police radio communications from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, providing the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.“Anytime you mention his name, you’re not getting an answer from me,” she told reporters. “Don’t waste my time.”Almost as soon as the police retook control on Jan. 6, hard-core defenders of Mr. Trump in Congress began recasting the gruesome scenes of violence that left five people dead.Mr. McCarthy, the California Republican, responded differently at first: He angrily demanded that Mr. Trump stop the rioters, according to an account he gave fellow Republicans at the time. A week later, as the House moved to impeach Mr. Trump, Mr. McCarthy said that “the president bears responsibility” for the “attack on Congress by mob rioters” and called for a fact-finding commission.But in the months since, that early resolve has given way to an out-and-out intent to bury the attack. Mr. McCarthy, who is trying to win back the majority in 2022, moved quickly to patch things up with Mr. Trump, gave latitude to far-right members of his caucus and worked furiously to block the creation of an independent 9/11-style commission.This past week, just before the officers began to deliver anguished testimony about the brutality they had endured, Mr. McCarthy repeatedly laid blame not with Mr. Trump, the rioters or those who had fueled doubts about the election outcome, but with Ms. Pelosi, one of the invading mob’s chief targets.“If there is a responsibility for this Capitol, on this side, it rests with the speaker,” Mr. McCarthy said.Officers who defended the Capitol, like Harry Dunn, delivered emotional testimony at the first hearing of a House select committee this past week.Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesRepresentative Elise Stefanik of New York, the recently selected House conference chairwoman, went even further, saying Ms. Pelosi “bears responsibility” as speaker “for the tragedy that occurred on Jan. 6” and deriding her as “an authoritarian who has broken the people’s house.”Ms. Pelosi is not responsible for the security of Congress; that job falls to the Capitol Police, a force that the speaker only indirectly influences. Republicans have made no similar attempt to blame Mr. McConnell, who shared control of the Capitol at the time.Outside the Justice Department, meanwhile, a group of conservative lawmakers gathered to accuse prosecutors of mistreating the more than 500 people accused in the Jan. 6 riot.Encouraged by Mr. Trump, they also echoed far-right portrayals of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who was shot trying to break into the House chamber, as a patriotic martyr whose killing by the police was premeditated.As if to show how anti-democratic episodes are ping-ponging around the globe, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in June seized on Ms. Babbitt’s killing — calling it an “assassination” — to deflect questions about his own country’s jailing of political prisoners.Some senior Republicans insist that warnings of a whitewash are overwrought.“I don’t think anybody’s going to be successful erasing what happened,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. “Everybody saw it with their own eyes and the nation saw it on television.”Speaker Nancy Pelosi has increasingly treated House Republicans as a pariah party, unworthy of collaboration or trust.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesFor Mr. Cornyn and other lawmakers, continuing to talk about the attack is clearly an electoral loser at a time when they are trying to retake majorities in Congress and avoid Mr. Trump’s ire.Most Republican lawmakers instead simply try to say nothing at all, declining even to recount the day’s events, let alone rebuke members of their party for spreading falsehoods or muddying the waters.Asked how he would describe the riot, in which a hostile crowd demanded the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence, his brother, Representative Greg Pence of Indiana, responded curtly, “I don’t describe it.”Yet the silence of party stalwarts, including nearly all of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in the attack and the Republican senators who voted to convict him, has created an information void that hard-right allies of Mr. Trump have readily filled. And they have found receptive audiences in a media environment replete with echo chambers and amplifying algorithms.In a July poll by CBS News, narrow majorities of Trump voters said they would describe the attack as an example of “patriotism” or “defending freedom.”That silence follows a familiar pattern: Rather than refute false allegations about a stolen election and rampant voter fraud, many leading Republicans have simply tolerated extremist misinformation. Perhaps no one’s silence has been more significant than that of Mr. McConnell, who criticized Mr. Trump and his party in the immediate aftermath of the attack, denouncing it as a “failed insurrection” fueled by the former president’s lies.A group of conservative members of Congress called a hasty news conference outside the Justice Department to accuse prosecutors of treating the arrested rioters unfairly.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesSince Mr. Trump’s impeachment acquittal by the Senate in February, when Mr. McConnell declared him “practically and morally responsible,” the minority leader has all but refused to discuss Jan. 6. The quiet acquiescence of party leaders has effectively left Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois as the only two Republicans still willing to speak out against a majority of their party.“Clearly there were security failings at the Capitol, but there was a mob that tried to prevent us from carrying out our constitutional duty,” Ms. Cheney said in an interview. “It’s very hard for me to understand why any member of Congress of either party would want to whitewash that.”Ms. Cheney has already paid a price: Republicans ousted her this spring from their No. 3 leadership position, replacing her with Ms. Stefanik.Now, House hard-liners want to expel her and Mr. Kinzinger from the Republican conference altogether, portraying them as “snitches” and “spies” in league with Democrats.The message is clear: Adherence to facts cannot overcome adherence to the party line. More

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      Why Do Republicans Hate Cops?

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      WASHINGTON — It was, I must admit, a virtuoso performance by Sean Hannity.Not since the sheriff in “Blazing Saddles” put a gun to his own head and took himself hostage has anyone executed such a nutty loop de loop. More

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      ‘Gut-Wrenching’ Jan. 6 Testimony by Capitol Officers

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      “Finding the truth and holding leaders responsible for what happened on Jan. 6 should not be a partisan issue,” one reader writes.To the Editor:Re “Beaten, Tased and Crushed by Rioters at Capitol” (front page, July 28):For those who do not believe that there was a violent insurrection on Jan. 6 and that former President Donald Trump instigated it, please listen to and watch Tuesday’s testimony of the heroic officers attacked at the Capitol. Your ears and eyes provide the best evidence that this was an assault on our democracy.Finding the truth and holding leaders responsible for what happened on Jan. 6 should not be a partisan issue. Hats off to the two Republican committee members, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, for reminding us about that.As someone who has followed government investigations for nearly 60 years, I have never seen a more gripping and gut-wrenching congressional hearing — one that should be watched and rewatched by all Americans. When asked what the congressional committee should do, several of the officers said political leaders who played any role in causing the insurrection should be investigated and held accountable.Let us honor the request of these brave officers. Doing anything less is to disrespect the heroic service of these public servants and poses a threat to our fragile democracy.Richard CherwitzAustin, TexasTo the Editor:What the officers’ testimonies revealed was that many participants in the assault on the Capitol actually called and felt themselves to be “patriots.” They moved en masse as true believers trying to right an imagined wrong perpetrated on their country, the illegitimate steal of votes from the rightful leader.While we cannot condone the lawlessness of their action and must bring all the perpetrators to justice, we must also study, understand and address the sociological and psychological realities — the fears, disenfranchisement, loneliness and isolation — that motivated the assailants and fueled the horrendous event, if we are to prevent similar attacks from recurring.Carmine GiordanoLake Worth, Fla.The writer is a psychoanalyst.To the Editor:Let me remind everyone that Donald Trump called the folks at the Capitol “peaceful people” and “great people.” These folks, who participated in a riot intended to overturn the presidential election, were actually, if our former president can be believed, a “loving crowd.”On Jan. 6, that “loving crowd” injured about 140 police officers. That riotous lovefest cost four of the rioters their lives. Just imagine how badly things might have gone — for me, for you, for our country, for our democracy — if the mob had been less loving.John R. ScannellSammamish, Wash.To the Editor:As someone who wishes the Democrats well, I believe that this select committee will always be open to criticism that it is partisan. Had Kevin McCarthy’s choices been accepted by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the result would have been a more balanced Republican delegation, with both anti-Trump and pro-Trump members. Having Jim Banks and Jim Jordan on the committee would have also forced them to confront the facts as they unfold.Ms. Pelosi’s arrogant rejection of the delegation now ensures that no matter what emerges from the investigation, the committee will be judged as deeply partisan. That will be good neither for the Democrats nor the country.David ParentWallingford, Conn.To the Editor:Re “Jan. 6 Questions I Want Answered,” by Adam Kinzinger (Opinion guest essay, July 28):That Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney are the only Republicans who have the courage to seek the truth about what happened on that terrible day says so much to me about the blind loyalty the rest of their party has to the former president.Every day, I wonder exactly why this party has made the gamble to support white supremacists, to engage in wild theories about the 2020 election and to obey the instructions of the person who lost the election. What does he hold over these people that they cannot stand up to him?In the end, the more hopeful side of me believes their actions will fail and the serious nature of Mr. Kinzinger’s and Ms. Cheney’s line of inquiry will succeed. It may take a while, but truth will win out over subversion of our government.Jane CarlinNantucket, Mass. More

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      What if January 6 Wasn’t a Coup Attempt, General Milley?

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

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      U.S. Declines to Defend Trump Ally in Lawsuit Over Jan. 6 Riot

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