Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Pence Calls Systemic Racism A ‘Left-Wing Myth'

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      Former Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday described systemic racism as a “left-wing myth” during a speech hosted by a Republican group in New Hampshire, adopting the racial politics of his former boss, President Donald J. Trump.But Mr. Pence, a potential candidate for a 2024 presidential run, also distanced himself from the former president, describing the Jan. 6 attack as “a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol.”“President Trump and I’ve spoken many times since we left office,” Mr. Pence said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever see eye-to-eye on that day.”The speech illustrated the careful balance Mr. Pence is aiming to strike in squaring the rhetoric of the Republican Party under Mr. Trump while standing by his opposition to Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.After focusing much of his speech on touting the achievements of the Trump administration, Mr. Pence took aim at “critical race theory,” a graduate school framework that has found its way into K-12 public education, asserting that young children are being taught “to be ashamed of their skin color.”“It is past time for America to discard the left-wing myth of systemic racism,” Mr. Pence said at the annual Lincoln Reagan Dinner hosted by the Hillsborough County Republicans in Manchester, N.H.“America is not a racist country,” Mr. Pence said to raucous applause, two days after President Biden commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre.Republicans have launched an energetic campaign in recent months aiming to dictate how historical and modern racism in America is taught in schools, and Mr. Pence indicated his support of efforts to ban critical race theory through legislation advanced in Republican-led states. Mr. Pence had previously targeted critical race theory in tweets and in his first speech in April after leaving office.Mr. Pence’s appeal to racial politics went beyond education. Discussing efforts to defund law enforcement agencies, the former vice president said “Black lives are not endangered by police, Black lives are saved by police,” co-opting the language of Black Lives Matter — a movement he had shunned in office. More

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      A Stanford Student Mocked the Federalist Society. It Jeopardized His Graduation.

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      The Stanford student sent a satirical flier that drew a complaint from the conservative group. The university then placed a hold on his diploma.It was the final day of classes at Stanford Law School, May 27, when Nicholas Wallace said he was blindsided by a message from one of the deans informing him that his graduation was in jeopardy for potential misconduct.His offense: sending an email flier to fellow law students in January that he pretended was from the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative and libertarian group with a chapter at the law school.The satirical flier promoted a discussion about the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, featuring Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, and the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton. The title of the mock event: “The Originalist Case for Inciting Insurrection.”The chapter’s leaders were not amused. They filed a complaint on March 27 with the university, which said in a message to Mr. Wallace that it wasn’t until May 22 that the complainants had asked the administration to pursue the matter.“I was astounded,” Mr. Wallace, 32, said in an interview on Wednesday. “I couldn’t believe that without any more than this letter of concern they placed my graduation and everything I’ve worked for for the last three years, they’ve placed that under threat.”Mr. Wallace’s predicament drew national attention from both free speech groups and conservatives. It served as another example of the intense debate over political speech on college campuses in America.In response to questions on Wednesday, a spokesman for Stanford University said in an email that Mr. Wallace would be allowed to graduate after all after administrators consulted with the university’s legal counsel, who concluded the matter involved issues of protected speech.“In cases where the complaint is filed in proximity to graduation, our normal procedure includes placing a graduation diploma hold on the respondent,” said the spokesman, E.J. Miranda. “The complaint was resolved as expeditiously as possible, and the respondent and complainant have been informed that case law supports that the email is protected speech.”Mr. Miranda said that the university would also review its procedures for placing holds on student diplomas in judicial cases close to graduation.The president of the campus chapter of the Federalist Society did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday night.Mr. Hawley, who received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University, was widely criticized for objecting to the certification of the presidential election results. Mr. Paxton has drawn scrutiny for his appearance at a rally in support of Donald J. Trump in Washington on the day of the siege.Representatives for Mr. Hawley and Mr. Paxton did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday night.Grabbing attention itself was Mr. Wallace’s satirical flier, which he said he had emailed to a Listserv forum for law school students on Jan. 25, nearly three weeks after the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.The flier said that the event was being presented by the Federalist Society on Jan. 6.“Riot information will be emailed the morning of the event,” the flier said, offering Grubhub coupons to the first 30 students who R.S.V.P.’d for the fictitious program. “Although widely believed to conflict in every way with the rule of law, violent insurrection can be an effective approach to upholding the principle of limited government.”Two days after the satirical flier was sent by Mr. Wallace, it was the focus of a fact check article by USA Today, which reported that the email was a form of satire.In a complaint to the university, unidentified officers of the Federalist Society chapter said that Mr. Wallace’s email had caused significant harm and had led other organizations to cancel their events with the group.“Wallace defamed the student group, its officers, Senator Josh Hawley, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton,” the complaint said. “Wallace, impersonating the Stanford Federalist Society, wrote on the flyer that ‘Riot information will be emailed the morning of the event,’ insinuating that the student group was encouraging and hosting a riot. He also wrote that Attorney General Paxton advocates for ‘overturn[ing] the results of a free and fair election’ by ‘calling on a violent mob to storm the Capitol.’ And he wrote that Senator Hawley believes that violent insurrections are justified.”The names of the complainants were redacted from the complaint, which was posted online on Monday by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group working to defend free speech on college campuses. Mr. Wallace had sought the group’s help.“By instituting an investigation and placing a hold on Wallace’s degree days before his graduation, Stanford betrays its legal and moral commitments to respect its students’ expressive rights,” the group said in a letter on Tuesday to one of the law school’s deans.The flap drew the notice of Slate magazine. The writer of that article, Mark Joseph Stern, was the featured speaker in a conversation about the Federalist Society that Mr. Wallace said he had organized about a month after he sent the satirical email.Mr. Wallace’s cause was also taken up by Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor emeritus at Harvard University.“Mocking an ideologically-based group can’t be made a basis for denying academic privileges in any open society worthy of respect,” Mr. Tribe wrote on Twitter. “If accurate, this report shows Stanford Law School to be unworthy of treatment as an academic institution.”George T. Conway III, one of the founders of the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project, also rallied behind Mr. Wallace.“As someone who been involved with the Federalist Society for over 35 years, I agree that this is totally ridiculous,” Mr. Conway said on Twitter, responding to Mr. Tribe.Mr. Wallace, who is from Ann Arbor, Mich., and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in Seattle, said that he is supposed to take the bar exam this summer in his home state and then start a job with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C.He said that he would not have been able to take the bar exam without his law school diploma, which he will receive on June 12. More

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      Is America’s Democracy Slipping Away?

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      On Jan. 6, as Donald Trump was revving up the rioters who would attempt an insurrection at the Capitol, just a short distance away, he said to them: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” More

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      Death of QAnon Follower at Capitol Leaves a Wake of Pain

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      Rosanne Boyland had never voted before 2020, but she fell prey to dark conspiracy theories, family members said. She died on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and they are still not sure why.For months, Rosanne Boyland had been worrying her family with bizarre notions she had picked up on the internet: The actor Tom Hanks might be dead, she said. A national furniture chain was trafficking children. Many prominent Democrats were pedophiles.Then, early in January, she texted her older sister that she was heading to Washington with a friend to support President Donald J. Trump and protest what was happening in the country. “I’m going to dc,” she wrote. “I dont know all the deets yet.”Ms. Boyland, 34, was one of five people who never made it home from the Jan. 6 protest, which erupted in violence when hundreds of people stormed into the Capitol. Her death has left her family grappling to understand how Ms. Boyland, who they say had never voted before 2020, wound up waving a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag amid a crowd of fanatic supporters of the former president before walking up the steps of the Capitol to her death.Their frustration deepened further this week when Republicans in the Senate blocked an effort to establish an independent commission to look into the origins and the handling of the attack on the Capitol.Five people died, including Ms. Boyland, at the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol that followed the Jan. 6 rally.Jason Andrew for The New York Times“Why anyone would NOT want to find out what happened, even just to prevent it from happening again, is beyond me,” Ms. Boyland’s older sister, Lonna Cave, said in a text message after the vote.For months before the rally, Ms. Boyland had bombarded her friends and relatives with messages and links to long videos about the fantastical theories she had come to accept as fact. Many of the false claims spilled from QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory movement that rose in popularity over the course of his presidency and promoted the idea that many Democrats and celebrities are part of a global pedophile ring — a theory that 15 percent of Americans believe, according to one poll this week. Many of its supporters falsely believed that President Biden had stolen the election, and some attended Mr. Trump’s rally on Jan. 6.Ms. Boyland’s sudden fixation so alarmed her family members and friends that some of them asked her to stop talking to them about politics — or just to stop talking altogether.Some of her closest friends believe that Ms. Boyland was a vulnerable target for the conspiracy theorists. After a stint in drug rehabilitation, she had returned to her parents’ home and largely avoided drugs for several years, her family said. But the isolation brought about by the pandemic was making it harder. QAnon filled a void in her life, they said, helping distract her from thoughts of returning to drugs even as it acted as a different kind of hallucinogen.“I was worried that she was trading one addiction for another,” said Blaire Boyland, her younger sister. “It just seemed like, yes, she’s not doing drugs, but she’s very obsessively online, watching all these YouTube videos and going down the rabbit hole.”The family is also still struggling to understand how she died. From the video of the chaotic siege, it appeared that she had died after being caught in a crush of rioters. But the autopsy by the Washington medical examiner’s office did not find evidence of trampling and concluded that she had overdosed on amphetamines.Family members said it was likely that the only amphetamine in her body was the Adderall she took every day by prescription, though it appeared that she might have taken at least twice her prescribed dose.“We just want to find out what happened, to be able to rest,” Ms. Cave said. “This has been so messed up. We just want to grieve the normal way.”A descent into conspiracy theoriesFor years, Ms. Boyland had been barred from voting because she had been convicted of felony drug possession, but she had also shown little interest in politics until 2020. In the fall, though, free from probation, she made it clear early on that she planned to cast a ballot for Mr. Trump. She registered to vote on Oct. 3, a month before the election, records show.“She was so happy that she was able to vote,” recalled Stephen Marsh, 36, a friend of Ms. Boyland’s who said that she had been so thrilled that she had called his mother. “She was so excited about it because her past made it difficult for her to participate.”Rosanne Boyland texted her older sister that she was heading to Washington with a friend to support President Donald J. Trump on Jan. 6.Justin Cave, via Associated PressBut her increasing absorption in the QAnon community was by that time pushing some of her closest friends away.“I care about you, but I think it would be best if we didn’t talk for a while,” one friend since childhood, Sydney Vinson, texted her on Oct. 3 after Ms. Boyland had sent her a long text message and screenshots about purported government manipulation of the news media. “Please don’t send me any more political stuff.”Ms. Boyland was the middle of three sisters, growing up in Kennesaw, Ga., a city of 34,000 people about 25 miles northwest of Atlanta. She and her sisters were close as children, and her younger sister said she had been inspired by Ms. Boyland’s assertiveness and confidence. Even then, she had a penchant for conspiracy theories, her sisters said, but harmless ones, like the existence of extraterrestrials or of Bigfoot.But when she was about 16, her life took a turn when she began dating an abusive boyfriend, her sisters said. She would blame black eyes on soccer practice and once came home with an unexplained shoulder injury. Around that time, she also got hooked on opioids.She eventually dropped out of high school, and her relationship with her family became strained. In 2009, when she was 23, she was charged with felony drug possession. Several other cases would follow, the most recent in April 2013, after which she was given five years of probation. It was only in July 2014, when she learned about the pregnancy of her older sister, Ms. Cave, that she pledged to be a better role model for her niece, her sisters said — and from that moment on, with a few brief relapses, she was largely sober.“She was always talking about how she couldn’t wait to be the aunt that was the cool aunt,” said Ms. Cave, who gave birth to her first daughter in March 2015. She now has two daughters, 5 and 6.Ms. Boyland grew close to both of them, often picking them up from school and documenting milestones in their lives. She spent much of her time going to group meetings and counseling other people who were struggling with drugs. At one point, she hoped to become a counselor herself.Ms. Boyland was the middle of three sisters, growing up in Kennesaw, Ga., about 25 miles northwest of Atlanta. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesWhen the pandemic arrived, though, she had to spend much of her time alone at her parents’ house, and her in-person group meetings were canceled. She told her sisters that she frequently felt an urge to begin using drugs again.“She was really struggling,” Blaire Boyland said. “She tried doing the Zoom meetings, but she wasn’t getting anything out of it. She felt out of control.”Her friends began noticing that she was posting about conspiracy theories and Mr. Trump. Before long, she was texting them about PizzaGate, the conspiracy theory that included false claims about Democrats’ trafficking of children in the basement of a pizza shop in Washington.“I’ve mostly been watching it all on youtube,” Ms. Boyland said in a text message to Ms. Vinson, her childhood friend. What most captured her attention, Ms. Vinson said, was the “Save the Children” slogan that QAnon members used to spread false claims about Democrats’ trafficking of children.“She cared about kids a lot,” Ms. Vinson said. “She thought she was fighting for children, in her own way, and just trying to spread the word about underground pedophile rings and just all of these things. I think QAnon had this way of making these things seem really believable.”At about 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 5, Ms. Boyland began the roughly 10-hour drive to Washington with a friend, Justin Winchell. They parked in Virginia and took a bus into the city to see Mr. Trump at the rally, where he riled up the crowd with unsubstantiated claims that his election loss had been rigged. “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Mr. Trump told the crowd.Ms. Boyland headed with many of the other protesters down the street to the Capitol.The chaotic siegeMs. Boyland could barely be made out at first in the footage of the crowd’s surge up the Capitol steps — a short figure, outfitted in a black hoodie and American flag sunglasses.She disappeared into the mob inside the tunnel presidents use when they emerge for their inaugurations. It was the scene of some of the day’s most brutal hand-to-hand fighting, and videos showed rioters crushing police officers between doors and warning that the crowd could become dangerously packed.Just minutes later, after a push by the police that sent the crowd tumbling back out of the tunnel, she could be seen lying on her side, after which two men dragged her away from the door and began trying to resuscitate her.It appeared to be a case of trampling. But then the medical examiner concluded that she had died of “acute amphetamine intoxication,” a ruling that left her family, convinced that she had not relapsed into drug abuse, flummoxed. She had been taking Adderall regularly under a doctor’s prescription and had not been seen to have any adverse effects, they said.Several forensic pathologists and toxicologists who reviewed the autopsy report said in interviews that the level of amphetamine in her blood — most likely from the Adderall — had been enough to be potentially fatal.Iain M. McIntyre, the former chief toxicologist at the San Diego County medical examiner’s office, said the level could be consistent with her having taken both of her 30-milligram daily doses at the same time, something Ms. Cave said her sister sometimes did. Mr. McIntyre said the high dosage of amphetamine, along with the raucous scene, her heart disease and obesity, could have been enough to make her heart stop.Rosanne Boyland’s sister Lonna Cave and her husband, Justin Cave, were left wondering what they might have missed.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThe day after her death, Ms. Cave’s husband, Justin Cave, told reporters that Mr. Trump had “incited a riot last night that killed four of his biggest fans.” Then came a spate of cruel messages to the family from all sides — people who said they were glad Ms. Boyland had died, and others who had been infuriated by Mr. Cave’s comments.Ms. Cave and her husband were left wondering what they had missed, how they could have helped Ms. Boyland before she fell too deeply into the conspiracy theories.“That’s part of the reason I feel guilty, because none of us thought too much about it when she started looking into it,” Ms. Cave said. “I understand that she was somewhere she shouldn’t have been. But she would not have been here if it weren’t for all the misinformation.” More

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      Republicans Oppose Jan.6 Panel With Elections in Mind

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      Republicans see an independent inquiry into the attack on the Capitol as a threat to their push to regain control of the Senate and the House.WASHINGTON — Leading congressional Republicans offer multiple justifications for why they oppose an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, but there is really one overriding reason: They fear it will hurt their party’s image and hinder their attempts to regain power in next year’s midterm elections.Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, was unusually candid about his party’s predicament, which he said was “weighing on people’s minds” as they contemplated the prospect of an inquiry into the deadliest attack on the Capitol in two centuries.Republicans, he said, wondered “whether or not this can be, in the end, a fair process that fully examines the facts around Jan. 6 in an objective way, and doesn’t become a political weapon in the hands of the Democrats.”Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, as is his style, was much more circumspect. But in a closed-door luncheon this week, Mr. McConnell, the minority leader, warned fellow Republican senators that the proposed panel — the product of a deal between a top Democrat and a top Republican in the House — was not as bipartisan as it appeared. He said he believed that Democrats had partisan motives in moving to set up the commission and would try to extend the investigation into 2022 and the midterm election season, tarnishing Republicans and complicating Mr. McConnell’s drive to return as majority leader.A day later, Mr. McConnell joined Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, in flat-out opposing the creation of the 10-member commission. Four months after the deadly assault that targeted them and their institution, the two minority leaders in Congress had united against a bipartisan inquiry that would provide a full accounting for the riot.Like Mr. McConnell, Mr. McCarthy is determined to put Republicans in the House majority next year and himself in the speakership, and he regards an investigation into what happened on Jan. 6 as an obstacle in his path.Given that the commission would be likely to delve into the details of Donald J. Trump’s role in stoking the riot with lies about a stolen election — and that of his party in spreading those false claims and seeking to invalidate President Biden’s victory — it stands to reason that any investigation could be damaging to Republicans. The testimony of Mr. McCarthy, who was in contact with Mr. Trump by phone on Jan. 6, would undoubtedly be sought.Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, archly referred to potential Republican culpability during a House debate on Wednesday, saying the inquiry was needed to get to the bottom of what took place.“Why did that happen?” he asked. “How did it happen? How can we stop it from happening again? What are the resources that we need? And yes, who was responsible? Some, perhaps, are going to vote against this because that’s what they fear.”Capitol Police officers aiming their guns at a barricaded door as rioters tried to enter the House chamber on Jan. 6.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressThe political dynamic was a stark difference from the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, when lawmakers, despite months of disagreement and negotiation, finally came together around the idea of forming an outside inquiry. The independent commission they created has become the gold standard for such efforts, and was heralded for its work in unraveling the origins of the terrorist attacks and making recommendations to prevent a recurrence. Just three House members opposed the formation of that commission on the final vote in November 2002, and the proposal was approved on a voice vote in the Senate.But there was no hope for a similar consensus outcome in the House on Wednesday — and most likely none in the Senate in the future — at a time when many Republicans have been working to deflect any close examination of the riot, and some have tried to downplay or deny its crucial facts.Republican leaders have dug in against the commission even though one of their own members negotiated its details with Democrats, who acceded to their initial demands about its structure. The Jan. 6 proposal was modeled very closely on the Sept. 11 commission. But times have changed, and the Capitol riot has become just another partisan dividing line in a divided capital.Political risks were a very real consideration in 2002 as well. The Bush administration, and particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, quietly hindered the drive to set up the bipartisan commission even as the White House professed to be fully supportive of the effort. President George W. Bush and members of his administration knew that the disclosure of intelligence lapses leading up to Sept. 11 and other aspects of the investigation could be severely damaging, and they were in no rush to back an inquiry that could haunt the president’s re-election in 2004. But the pressure built to the point where Congress was finally able to proceed.Many of the objections being raised now were also aired during the debate surrounding the Sept. 11 commission. Mr. McConnell and others have said that congressional committee inquiries can get the job done while the Justice Department is deep into its own criminal investigations.“It’s not at all clear what new facts or additional investigation yet another commission could lay on top of the existing efforts by law enforcement and Congress,” Mr. McConnell said.But to Democrats and others supporting the commission, that is the point: A bipartisan inquiry could find facts and developments that other, more narrowly focused investigations might miss, and then be able to deliver a more comprehensive picture of what happened on Jan. 6. The Sept. 11 commission went to work after numerous congressional inquiries, including an in-depth, joint House and Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, and there was still plenty of room for the panel to expand on that and other work.Republicans have also raised concerns that the inquiry could complicate the criminal prosecution of those being charged in the assault — a common critique of congressional investigations that parallel criminal inquiries. And they objected that Democrats would appoint the chair of the panel and control the hiring of staff members, suggesting that even with Republicans able to appoint half of the commission members, Democrats would really be in control.“It will be up to the commission to decide how far they want to go,” said Representative John Katko, Republican of New York, who helped negotiate the bipartisan committee agreement.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesRepresentative John Katko of New York, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, who negotiated the agreement with Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, sought to dispel those concerns and others, calling them unwarranted.“The commission creates the rules as a team,” Mr. Katko said. He also dismissed complaints from Republicans that the scope of the panel was too narrow given civil unrest around the nation, including by left-leaning activists, saying there was no reason the commission could not examine such episodes.“It will be up to the commission to decide how far they want to go,” he said.Such assurances are unlikely to move Mr. McConnell and Mr. McCarthy, who have other reasons for opposing the commission. They believe that Democrats have a vested interest in calling attention to the horrors of Jan. 6, and saw the efforts by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to maintain fencing around the Capitol and keep National Guard troops present as ways to remind Americans of the assault by pro-Trump forces. Given all of that, it is not clear whether the proposal can draw the 10 Republicans whose votes would be needed to advance the bill creating the inquiry past a filibuster in the Senate.But 35 Republicans in the House broke from the leadership and supported the commission. They said it was time for others in their party to do the same in the pursuit of truth.“We need the answers, not political rhetoric,” said Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, one of the 35. “That’s what this bipartisan commission can provide for all of us, for our country. Let the truth shine in.” More

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      House Backs Jan. 6 Commission, but Senate Path Dims

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      The vote was a victory for Democrats, who were joined by 35 Republicans in pushing for a full accounting of the deadly riot. But Mitch McConnell voiced opposition, clouding Senate prospects.WASHINGTON — A sharply divided House voted on Wednesday to create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, overcoming opposition from Republicans determined to stop a high-profile accounting of the deadly pro-Trump riot.But even as the legislation passed the House, top Republicans locked arms in an effort to doom it in the Senate and shield former President Donald J. Trump and their party from new scrutiny of their roles in the events of that day.The 252-to-175 vote in the House, with four-fifths of Republicans opposed, pointed to the difficult path for the proposal in the Senate. Thirty-five Republicans bucked their leadership to back the bill.The vote came hours after Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, declared his opposition to the plan. Mr. McConnell had said just a day earlier that he was open to voting for it, and he had previously been vocal both in condemning Mr. Trump’s role in instigating the assault and denouncing the effort by some Republicans on Jan. 6 to block certification of the 2020 election results.His reversal reflected broader efforts by the party to put the assault on the Capitol behind them politically — or to recast the rioting as a largely peaceful protest — under pressure from Mr. Trump and because of concerns about the issue dogging them into the 2022 midterm elections.Proponents hailed the move to establish the commission as an ethical and practical necessity to fully understand the most violent attack on Congress in two centuries and the election lies by Mr. Trump that fueled it. Modeled after the body that studied the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the 10-person commission would take an inquiry out of the halls of Congress and deliver findings by Dec. 31.“I was on the Capitol floor, the speaker was in the chair and a howling mob attacked the United States Capitol,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of a committee already studying the attack, said in an animated appeal before the vote. She reminded colleagues of the “pounding on the doors” and the “maimed police officers.”“We need to get to the bottom of this to not just understand what happened leading up to the Sixth, but how to prevent that from happening again — how to protect the oldest democracy in the world in the future,” Ms. Lofgren said.But the prospects for Senate passage dimmed substantially after Mr. McConnell joined his House counterpart, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, and Mr. Trump in panning the proposal drafted by Democrats and a moderate House Republican as overly partisan and duplicative of continuing Justice Department criminal prosecutions and narrow congressional investigations.“After careful consideration, I’ve made the decision to oppose the House Democrats’ slanted and unbalanced proposal for another commission to study the events of Jan. 6,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, who had earlier said he was open to backing the commission, came out against it on Wednesday.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMany rank-and-file Republican senators who had flirted with backing the commission idea quickly fell in line, as well, arguing that the proposal was not truly bipartisan and that the investigation would take too long and learn too little. Their positions made it less likely that Democrats could win over the 10 Republican votes they would need to reach the 60-vote threshold required for passage of the bill in the evenly divided Senate.Republican leaders, who witnessed the events of Jan. 6 and fled for their lives as an armed mob overtook their workplace, had briefly considered supporting the commission out of a sense of fairness. The 9/11 commission was adopted nearly unanimously two decades ago, and its work was widely heralded.Their final opposition pointed to a colder political calculation now driving Republicans’ approach to 2022: that it is better to avoid a potentially uncontrollable reckoning centered on Mr. Trump and the false claims of voter fraud he continues to promulgate.“I want our midterm message to be about the kinds of issues that the American people are dealing with — it’s jobs and wages and the economy, national security, safe streets, strong borders and those types of issues,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, Mr. McConnell’s No. 2. “Not relitigating the 2020 election.”Coming after a bipartisan negotiation that had been sanctioned by Mr. McCarthy, the outcome was dispiriting to those who felt that Mr. Trump’s exit from the public stage and the realities of an attack on the seat of government might help ease the strained relations between Republicans and Democrats.The two parties are expected to deadlock again on Thursday when Democrats call a vote on a $1.9 billion spending plan to harden the Capitol’s defenses four months after at least five people died in connection with the invasion, which also injured nearly 140 people and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage to the Capitol complex.Democrats were furious. They had agreed to several concessions to Mr. McCarthy under the belief he would support the deal, only to see him slam it publicly because it did not study unrelated “political violence” on the left. Some Democrats said the episode only underscored to them that it was pointless to negotiate with the Republicans on any of the big issues that divide the parties, including President Biden’s infrastructure proposal.In the House, Democratic leaders threatened to pursue a more partisan investigation of Jan. 6 through existing congressional committees or by creating a new select committee if the commission proposal dies.Democratic lawmakers, and even some Republicans, speculated that Mr. McCarthy’s reticence could have been driven in part by an effort to prevent damaging information about his own conversations with Mr. Trump around Jan. 6 from coming to light at a time when he is trying to help his party retake the House and become speaker.“You’ll have to ask them what they are afraid of,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California told reporters. “But it sounds like they are afraid of the truth, and that is most unfortunate.”Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, vowed to call a vote on the Senate floor in the coming weeks to force Republicans to take a public position, though he did not offer a specific date.“The American people will see for themselves whether our Republican friends stand on the side of truth or on the side of Donald Trump’s big lie,” he said.During debate on the House floor, Republicans who supported the panel repeatedly sought to frame it as a reprise of the 9/11 commission, whose leaders endorsed the new effort. Though the Senate impeachment trial and a handful of congressional committees have already produced a detailed account of that day, key questions remain unanswered, particularly about Mr. Trump’s conduct and the roots of intelligence and security failures.“Make no mistake about it, this is about facts, it’s not partisan politics,” said Representative John Katko, Republican of New York, who negotiated the legislation creating the commission with Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi.Representative Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday at the Capitol. He has panned the proposal as overly partisan and duplicative of continuing Justice Department criminal prosecutions and narrow congressional investigations.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“Jan. 6 is going to haunt this institution for a long, long time,” said Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, another Republican who voted in favor of establishing the commission. “Five months later, we still don’t have answers to the basic questions: who knew what when, and what did they do about it?”Among the Republicans voting in favor of the commission were a familiar group of moderates and stalwart critics of Mr. Trump, many of whom either voted to impeach him over the Jan. 6 attack or otherwise condemned his actions. The most notable was Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was run out of the party leadership last week because she refused to stop criticizing Mr. Trump for his attempts to overturn the election.But supporters also counted a wider cast of established Republicans from conservative-leaning districts who, despite the politics, were rattled by the attack and want a thorough study.Among those voting no was Representative Greg Pence, Republican of Indiana and the brother of former Vice President Mike Pence, whose opposition to blocking certification of the election results made him one of the principal targets of the pro-Trump rioters, some of whom erected a gallows outside the Capitol. In a statement, Representative Pence said Ms. Pelosi was trying to appoint herself “hanging judge” to carry out a “predetermined political execution of Donald Trump.”The level of Republican defections on Wednesday’s vote was embarrassing for Mr. McCarthy at a time when he has vowed to unite the party, and few Republicans were willing to defend their opposition during debate. Allies of Mr. Katko were particularly incensed that the minority leader deputized him to make a deal and then cut him loose when he did.Democrats sought to further embarrass Republicans by circulating an unusual letter by Capitol Police officers expressing “profound disappointment” with Mr. McCarthy and Mr. McConnell.“It is unconscionable to even think anyone could suggest we need to move forward and get over it,” the officers wrote in the unsigned letter.In the Senate, a small group of moderate Republicans suggested on Wednesday they were still interested in pursuing a commission, albeit with changes to how staff members would be appointed. But Mr. McConnell left very little possibility that his leadership team could get to yes.Mr. McConnell had emerged from Jan. 6 as one of Mr. Trump’s most outspoken Republican critics, pinning blame squarely on him for losing the House, Senate and White House and inspiring the most deadly attack on Congress in 200 years. But in the months since, as Mr. Trump has reasserted control over the party, Mr. McConnell has been increasingly reluctant to stir his ire.On Wednesday, he insisted that he believed in getting to the bottom of what happened, but he argued that investigations already underway by the Justice Department and bipartisan Senate committees were sufficient. In reality, the scope of that work is likely to be much narrower than what a commission could study.“The facts have come out,” Mr. McConnell said, “and they will continue to come out.” More

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      Leaders Position House G.O.P. Against Independent Accounting for Jan. 6 Riot

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      Representative Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, said he would oppose the independent commission, and urged the party’s rank and file to do the same.WASHINGTON — Top House Republicans urged their colleagues on Tuesday to oppose bipartisan legislation creating an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, positioning their conference against a full accounting of the deadly riot by a pro-Trump mob.Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, announced his opposition in a lengthy statement on Tuesday morning, and his leadership team followed up later to recommend that lawmakers vote “no” on Wednesday. Together, the actions suggested that the House vote would be a mostly partisan affair, highlighting yet again Republicans’ reluctance to grapple with former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies and their determination to deflect attention from the Capitol assault.Mr. McCarthy had been pushing for any outside investigation to include a look at what he called “political violence” on the left, including by anti-fascists and Black Lives Matter, rather than focus narrowly on the actions of Mr. Trump and his supporters who carried out the riot.“Given the political misdirections that have marred this process, given the now duplicative and potentially counterproductive nature of this effort, and given the speaker’s shortsighted scope that does not examine interrelated forms of political violence in America, I cannot support this legislation,” Mr. McCarthy said in a statement.His opposition raised questions about the fate of the commission in the Senate, where Democrats would need at least 10 Republicans to agree to support its formation. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said he and other Republican senators were undecided and would “listen to the arguments on whether such a commission is needed.”House Republican leaders had initially suggested that they would allow lawmakers to vote however they saw fit, too. But they abruptly reversed course on Tuesday, releasing a “leadership recommendation” urging a “no” vote in an apparent bid to tamp down on the number of members embracing the bill.Mr. Trump himself put out a statement on Tuesday night calling the commission a “Democrat trap.” He urged Republicans to “get much tougher” and to oppose it unless it was expanded to look at “murders, riots, and fire bombings” in cities run by Democrats.“Hopefully, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are listening!” he said.In rejecting the commission, Mr. McCarthy essentially threw one of his key deputies, Representative John Katko of New York, under the bus in favor of shielding Mr. Trump and the party from further scrutiny. Mr. Katko had negotiated the makeup and scope of the commission with his Democratic counterpart on the Homeland Security Committee and enthusiastically endorsed it on Friday.It was all the more striking coming just days after Mr. McCarthy had maneuvered the ouster from leadership of his No. 3, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, because she refused to drop criticisms of Mr. Trump and Republicans who abetted his election falsehoods. Ms. Cheney has said that the commission should have a narrow scope, and that Mr. McCarthy should testify about a phone call with Mr. Trump during the riot.Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, immediately slammed Republican opposition as “cowardice” and released a letter Mr. McCarthy had sent her in February showing that Democrats had incorporated all three of his principal demands for a commission modeled after the one that studied the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.In it, Mr. McCarthy said he wanted to ensure any commission had an even ratio of appointees by Republicans and Democrats, shared subpoena power between the two parties’ appointees and did not include any “findings or other predetermined conclusions” in its organizing documents.Democrats ultimately agreed to all three, but in his statement on Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy said Ms. Pelosi had “refused to negotiate in good faith.”“I presume Trump doesn’t want this to happen,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader. “Enough said.”Mr. Katko predicted a “healthy” number of Republicans would still vote for it.“I can’t state this plainly enough: This is about facts,” Mr. Katko told the House Rules Committee at a hearing on the bill. “It’s not about partisan politics.”But by encouraging Republicans to vote no, Mr. McCarthy positioned the commission as yet another test of loyalty to Mr. Trump, spotlighting a rift within the party between a small minority that is willing to question him and the vast majority that is not.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, vowed to press the issue with Senate Republicans by quickly bringing the legislation up for a vote in that chamber.“Republicans can let their constituents know: Are they on the side of truth?” Mr. Schumer said. “Or do they want to cover up for the insurrectionists and Donald Trump?”Mr. McCarthy’s biggest complaint was the panel’s narrow focus on the riot itself — carried out by right-wing activists inspired by Mr. Trump — when he said it should take a broader look at political violence on the left, including a shooting by a left-leaning activist who targeted congressional Republicans at a baseball practice four years ago.Some Republicans have gone much further in recent weeks, trying to whitewash the violence on Jan. 6 that left five people dead, injured 140 police officers and endangered lawmakers’ lives along with that of Vice President Mike Pence.In remarks on the House floor on Tuesday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said a commission was needed to study “all the riots that happened during the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd,” not the attack on the Capitol. She also accused the Justice Department of mistreating those charged in connection with the attack.“While it’s catch and release for domestic terrorists, antifa, B.L.M., the people who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6 are being abused,” she said.Catie Edmondson More

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      Republicans Oust Cheney, Confirming Trump's Grasp on the Party

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      The Wyoming Republican gave an unrepentant final speech warning her colleagues that Donald J. Trump was leading them toward “destruction.” They booed and kicked her out.WASHINGTON — In a remarkable display of loyalty to Donald J. Trump, Republicans moved quickly to purge Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from House leadership on Wednesday, voting to oust their No. 3 for repudiating the former president’s election lies and holding him responsible for the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.The action, orchestrated by party leaders, came by voice vote during a raucous closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill that lasted just 15 minutes. With the votes stacked against her, Ms. Cheney made a defiant final speech rather than fight the ouster, warning that Republicans would follow Mr. Trump to their “destruction” by silencing dissent and refusing to reject the myth of a stolen election. She drew boos from her colleagues.After months of infighting that erupted after the violent end to his presidency, Republicans’ unceremonious ouster of Ms. Cheney, the scion of one of the nation’s most powerful conservative families, reflected how far the party has strayed from the policy principles and ideological touchstones that once defined it.The vote — and the manner in which it unfolded — also illustrated how Republican Party orthodoxy has come to be defined more by allegiance to a twice-impeached former president who prizes loyalty over all else than by a political agenda or a vision for governing.It came as more than 100 Republicans, including some prominent former elected officials, said they were considering breaking off and creating a third party if the G.O.P. failed to make major changes to extricate itself from Mr. Trump’s stranglehold and what it called “forces of conspiracy, division and despotism.”In an unrepentant last stand minutes before Republicans voted to strip her of her post, Ms. Cheney urged her colleagues not to “let the former president drag us backward,” according to a person familiar with the private comments. She said that if the party wanted a leader who would “enable and spread his destructive lies,” they should vote to remove her, because they had “plenty of others to choose from.”“I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office,” Ms. Cheney told reporters afterward. “We have seen the danger that he continues to provoke with his language. We have seen his lack of commitment and dedication to the Constitution.”Ms. Cheney’s public comments on Wednesday were an unmistakable jab at Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader.After the deadly assault on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters, Mr. McCarthy said the former president had been responsible for the violence and should have quickly called off rioters who were threatening the lives of members of Congress and his own vice president. But he quickly walked back the criticism, which had enraged Mr. Trump, and since then he has arguably done more than anyone else in his party to keep the former president in the fold.Most Republicans are aware of the iron grip Mr. Trump still holds on the party’s voters.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesAfter backing her in a previous leadership challenge, based on her vote to impeach Mr. Trump, Mr. McCarthy had come to see Ms. Cheney as a distraction and political liability in his quest to regain the House majority and become speaker.For her part, Ms. Cheney made it clear that she regarded her ouster as a historic mistake, and intended to continue to be vocal in her criticism. She invited David Hume Kennerly, a former official White House photographer under President Gerald R. Ford with deep ties to her family, to record the day behind the scenes, and defended her stance in a lengthy television interview with NBC less than an hour after the vote.It represented a remarkable arc for the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, a stalwart Republican who became a despised figure among the left for advancing the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, a falsehood that drove the nation to war.On Wednesday, though, Democrats lavished praise on Ms. Cheney for her refusal to spread a lie, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling her “a leader of great courage, patriotism and integrity,” and pointing to her removal as a troubling sign for Republicans.“For the sake of our democracy, reasonable Republicans across the country must take back their party,” Ms. Pelosi said.Behind closed doors in the Congressional Auditorium, a blue-carpeted, wood-paneled hall where Republicans sat in theater-style seats, Ms. Cheney took to the stage on Wednesday morning to make her parting plea, drawing jeers as she warned her colleagues about the consequences of their current course. She ended with a prayer quoting from the Book of John — “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” — and asking God to “help us to remember that democratic systems can fray and suddenly unravel.”“When they do,” she added, “they are gone forever.”Republicans made it clear they were not interested in those reminders.“She who thinks she leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk,” said Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, as she made the motion to recall Ms. Cheney, according to a statement her office released afterward. “Liz, I’m afraid you’re a woman who is only taking a walk right now. You have lost your followers.”Republican leaders, who portrayed Ms. Cheney’s removal as a way to unify the party, declined to allow members to register a position on it.When Representative Tom Reed of New York, a moderate who has announced his retirement from Congress, rose to ask whether a recorded vote was allowed, he was told no. Mr. McCarthy had told his colleagues that a voice vote was important to show “unity,” and that it was time to “move forward” and look toward winning back the House, according to a person familiar with the remarks.When the time came, the ayes loudly drowned out the noes. The ouster was so swift that some Republicans were still trickling in to take their seats when Ms. Cheney strode up the center aisle to make her way to a bank of microphones and reporters waiting outside.Mr. McCarthy left without making a public statement, avoiding reporters altogether.At the White House later in the day, speaking to reporters after meeting with President Biden and other congressional leaders on infrastructure, Mr. McCarthy brushed off a question about comments by Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, whom he has anointed to succeed Ms. Cheney. Ms. Stefanik had echoed some of Mr. Trump’s false claims around widespread voter fraud.“I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election,” he said. “I think that is all over with.”Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, brushed off reporters’ questions about the party’s leadership after a meeting with President Biden at the White House.Doug Mills/The New York TimesRepresentative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who helped lead the charge against Ms. Cheney, said his case boiled down to a simple idea: “Can’t have a conference chair who recites Democrat talking points.”“It’s time to focus on stopping the Democrats and save the country,” he said.Mr. Trump weighed in Wednesday morning with statements attacking Ms. Cheney and cheering her removal, including one calling her “a poor leader, a major Democrat talking point, a warmonger and a person with absolutely no personality or heart.”Republicans who have styled themselves in his image also gloated openly, including the freshman Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who treated Ms. Cheney to a mocking farewell on Twitter: “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye Liz Cheney.”For all the backbiting and turmoil, the episode has also exposed a party unmoored from its traditional policy prerogatives even as Republicans hope to retake control of the House in 2022. Aware of the iron grip Mr. Trump holds on their voters and donors, Mr. McCarthy and other Republicans have made the calculation that to retake the majority, they need the former president’s support — or at the very least, cannot afford to invoke his wrath.“The notion that 5 percent of the Republican Party is going to eviscerate the influence of President Trump in the party never was plausible,” said Representative Dan Bishop, Republican of North Carolina. “It’s not good for the Republican Party. It’s not good for the country.”But the episode has only called attention to the party’s devotion to Mr. Trump, its tolerance for authoritarian tendencies, and internal divisions between Trump acolytes and more traditional Republicans about how to win back the House in 2022. All those dynamics threaten to alienate independent and suburban voters, undercutting what otherwise appears to be a sterling opportunity for Republicans to reclaim the majority.Representative Ken Buck, a conservative Colorado Republican who did not vote to impeach Mr. Trump and voted against removing Ms. Cheney on Wednesday, warned that the party’s rush to purge dissenting voices was more politically dangerous than Republican leaders seemed to understand.“Liz didn’t agree with President Trump’s narrative, and she was canceled,” Mr. Buck said.“It’s time to focus on stopping the Democrats and save the country,” said Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who helped lead the charge against Ms. Cheney.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“We have to deal with this narrative at some point,” he continued. “There are major issues — the border, spending. But to suggest that the American people in 2022 won’t consider the fact that we were unwilling to stand up to a narrative that the election was stolen, I think will be taken into consideration with their vote.”Republicans’ choice of replacement for Ms. Cheney has amplified that narrative. While party leaders have cast Ms. Stefanik as a unifying figure who will stick to the party script and stay focused on taking back the majority from Democrats, the New York Republican has resurrected Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud and pledged to stand by him and “his focus on election integrity.”Ms. Stefanik’s hasty ascension has also sparked discontent among the hard-right members of the Republican conference, who are suspicious of her recent transformation from a mainstream moderate who was skeptical of Mr. Trump into one of his most vocal defenders. They have taken issue with her voting record, including voting against his signature 2017 tax cuts bill and his efforts to seize funding to build a border wall.“I think she’s a liberal,” Mr. Buck told reporters on Wednesday. But he added that with top Republicans and Mr. Trump uniting to support Ms. Stefanik, he doubted that anybody would want to risk a future chairmanship or leadership role should Republicans win back the House by taking her on. “Which I think is terribly unfortunate,” he added.Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, circulated a broadside on Tuesday accusing Ms. Stefanik of being insufficiently conservative and said top Republicans were making a mistake by rushing to elevate her. On Wednesday, he appeared to entertain running against her.“She should have an opponent,” Mr. Roy said.A vote on whether to elevate Ms. Stefanik to the No. 3 post is expected on Friday. More