Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Supreme Court to Decide Whether Trump Is Eligible for Colorado Ballot

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      The Colorado Supreme Court ruled last month that the former president could not appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot because he had engaged in insurrection.The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether former President Donald J. Trump is eligible for Colorado’s Republican primary ballot, thrusting the justices into a pivotal role that could alter the course of this year’s presidential election.The sweep of the court’s ruling is likely to be broad. It will probably resolve not only whether Mr. Trump may appear on the Colorado primary ballot after the state’s top court declared that he had engaged in insurrection in his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, but it will most likely also determine his eligibility to run in the general election and to hold office at all.Not since Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that handed the presidency to George W. Bush, has the Supreme Court taken such a central role in an election for the nation’s highest office.The case will be argued on Feb. 8, and the court will probably decide it quickly. The Colorado Republican Party had urged the justices to rule by March 5, when many states, including Colorado, hold primaries.The number of challenges to Mr. Trump’s eligibility across the country can only have added pressure on the court to hear the Colorado case, as they underscored the need for a nationwide resolution of the question.The case is one of several involving or affecting Mr. Trump on the court’s docket or on the horizon. An appeals court will hear arguments on Tuesday on whether he has absolute immunity from prosecution, and the losing side is all but certain to appeal. And the court has already said that it will rule on the scope of a central charge in the federal election-interference case in a decision expected by June.Mr. Trump asked the Supreme Court to intervene after Colorado’s top court disqualified him from the ballot last month. That decision is on hold while the justices consider the matter.Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state, pressed the Supreme Court to act fast.“Coloradans, and the American people, deserve clarity on whether someone who engaged in insurrection may run for the country’s highest office,” she said in a statement.Mr. Trump acknowledged the court’s decision to hear the case at a rally Friday in Sioux Center, Iowa, saying he hoped the justices would fairly interpret the law. “All I want is fair; I fought really hard to get three very, very good people in,” he said, referring to his appointees. He added, “And I just hope that they’re going to be fair because, you know, the other side plays the ref.”The case turns on the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which bars those who had taken an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they then “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Congress can remove the prohibition, the provision says, but only by a two-thirds vote in each chamber.Though Section 3 addressed the aftermath of the Civil War, it was written in general terms and, most scholars say, continues to have force. More

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      Majorie Taylor Greene Book-Signing on Jan. 6 Stirs Backlash in Florida

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      A Florida venue canceled an event on Saturday featuring Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman and acolyte of Donald J. Trump, after materials promoting the event advertised it, in part, as an occasion marking the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.The gathering was being organized by the Osceola County Republican Party in central Florida as a book-signing event for Ms. Greene. It was supposed to take place on Saturday at the Westgate Resorts in Kissimmee, Fla. But backlash ensued after State Representative Anna V. Eskamani, a Democrat, posted on social media a screenshot of a text that advertised the event as being on the “3rd Anniversary of Jan 6.”Ms. Greene has repeatedly downplayed, and at times defended, the deadly insurrection at the Capitol three years ago. She has elevated popular right-wing claims, which have been refuted, that the attack was orchestrated by F.B.I. agents. In November, she called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to create a new Jan. 6 select committee to investigate the original committee’s members.Ms. Greene addressed the change in venue on Friday night, writing on the social media platform X that she won’t be backing down to Democrats who she claimed “tried to shut down my book-signing, but the show must go on!!”Mark Cross, the chairman of the Osceola County Republican Party, said he had first received notice that the venue had pulled out on Thursday evening. He attributed the cancellation to a “combination of disinformation that was put out and a lot of miscommunication between parties.”The theme of the event was meant to honor Republican women, Mr. Cross said, and the event “just happened to be on Jan. 6.” He added, “We’re not going out of the way to celebrate Jan. 6 — it’s something that happened. It was a negative thing for everyone involved.” He noted that the group “didn’t pick the day.”A representative for the resort confirmed that the event was no longer taking place there but declined to elaborate. “Please be advised that Westgate was not made aware of the purpose of this event when we were approached to host a book-signing,” Westgate Resorts said in a statement to NBC News, which first reported on the event. The party’s book-signing for Ms. Greene will now take place on Saturday at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in St. Cloud, Fla., Mr. Cross said.The event was originally advertised as an opportunity for attendees to hear from Ms. Greene and receive signed copies of her book, “M.T.G.” Prices to attend started at $45 for general admission and went up to $1,000 for “super V.I.P.s,” who would be allowed to attend a “special private briefing on J6 and DC.”Ms. Eskamani said in an interview that she was sent screenshots of the text by two friends. She praised Floridians who had “created the backlash” that preceded the cancellation of the event at the resort.“When I saw that text message, my first reaction was, ‘Is this a joke?’” she said. “No one should be commemorating, in a celebratory fashion or even with a book-signing, Jan. 6.” More

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      Biden Condemns Trump In Re-Election Speech: ‘Your Freedom Is on the Ballot’

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      President Biden on Friday delivered a ferocious condemnation of Donald J. Trump, his likely 2024 opponent, warning in searing language that the former president had directed an insurrection and would aim to undo the nation’s bedrock democracy if he returned to power.On the eve of the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters, Mr. Biden framed the coming election as a choice between a candidate devoted to upholding America’s centuries-old ideals and a chaos agent willing to discard them for his personal benefit.“There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do,” Mr. Biden warned in a speech at a community college not far from Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, where George Washington commanded troops during the Revolutionary War. Exhorting supporters to prepare to vote this fall, he said: “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question is: Who are we?”In an intensely personal address that at one point nearly led Mr. Biden to curse Mr. Trump by name, the president compared his rival to foreign autocrats who rule by fiat and lies. He said Mr. Trump had failed the basic test of American leaders, to trust the people to choose their elected officials and abide by their decisions.“We must be clear,” Mr. Biden said. “Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.”The harshness of Mr. Biden’s attack on his rival illustrated both what his campaign believes to be the stakes of the 2024 election and his perilous political standing. Confronted with low approval ratings, bad head-to-head polling against Mr. Trump, worries about his age and lingering unease with the economy, Mr. Biden is turning increasingly to the figure who has proved to be Democrats’ single best motivator.Mr. Trump, speaking at a campaign rally in Iowa soon after Mr. Biden’s appearance, quickly lashed back, calling the president’s comments “pathetic fearmongering” and accusing him of “abusing George Washington’s legacy.”Mr. Biden’s remarks carried echoes of the 2020 campaign, when he presented himself as the caretaker of “the soul of America” against a Trump presidency that he and Democratic supporters argued was on the verge of causing permanent damage to the country.The 31-minute speech was Mr. Biden’s first public campaign event since he announced in April that he would seek re-election and was, in tone and content, arguably his most forceful public denunciation of Mr. Trump since the two men became political rivals in 2019.Mr. Biden’s appearance, meant as a kickoff to help define the 2024 campaign, was an early effort to revive the politically sprawling anti-Trump coalition that propelled Democrats to key victories in recent elections. Mr. Biden’s task now is to persuade those voters to view the 2024 contest as the same kind of national emergency that they sensed in 2018, 2020 and 2022.President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, participated in a wreath ceremony at the Valley Forge National Arch before his speech on Friday. Pete Marovich for The New York TimesHe began with an extensive recounting of Mr. Trump’s actions before, during and after the Jan. 6 attack. The country, Mr. Biden said, cannot afford to allow Mr. Trump and his supporters to present a whitewashed version of that day and spread falsehoods about the violent outcome of their effort to undo the 2020 election results. Upholding the nation’s democracy, Mr. Biden said, is “the central cause of my presidency.”Mr. Biden said that, by contrast, Mr. Trump “refuses to denounce political violence,” asserting, “You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American.”Mr. Trump and his allies have spent the three years since the Capitol riot denying and deflecting his responsibility, downplaying the seriousness of the bloodshed and going so far as to suggest it was all a plot by Mr. Biden’s allies deep within the federal government to make Mr. Trump look bad.“Trump is trying to steal history, the same way he tried to steal the election,” Mr. Biden said. “It was on television. We saw it with our own eyes.”Mr. Biden made no mention of the 91 felony charges the former president faces in four jurisdictions, sticking to a vow to steer clear of his rival’s legal problems and focusing squarely on Mr. Trump’s actions rather than any potential criminal consequences for them.“Trump exhausted every legal avenue available to him to overturn the 2020 election. The legal path took him back to the truth, that I won the election and he was a loser,” Mr. Biden said. “He had one act left, one desperate act available to him, the violence of Jan. 6.”For a president who has faced intense scrutiny over his vigor in public appearances, the speech was a deftly delivered, focused argument about this year’s stakes. It was Mr. Biden’s latest attempt to build his political identity around the ideas of restoring national unity and upholding fairness, democracy and collective patriotism.He has come back to those themes many times, during his brief push for voting rights legislation in early 2022, then as the midterm elections approached and most recently in September, during a speech in Arizona honoring former Senator John McCain.On Friday, Mr. Biden sought to frame Mr. Trump as the leader of a cult of personality, and his Republican allies as sycophants. The president mentioned the recent $148 million judgment against Rudolph W. Giuliani for his lies about Georgia election workers, as well as the $787.5 million that Fox News was ordered to pay to settle a defamation case about its role in spreading election lies.Mr. Biden lamented that Fox News hosts and Republican officials who condemned Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 behavior in the moment had since changed their tune and repeated his falsehoods.“Politics, fear and money all intervened, and now these MAGA voices who know the truth about Jan. 6 have abandoned democracy,” Mr. Biden said.But what remains unclear is how much Mr. Biden’s democracy pitch will resonate with voters who remain nervous about an improving economy, and wary of re-electing an 81-year-old who is already the oldest president in U.S. history.Even some who have expressed deep fears about Mr. Trump’s authoritarian impulses are skeptical that the subject will be a winning message in 2024.“As a Biden campaign theme, I think the threat to democracy pitch is a bust,” Senator Mitt Romney of Utah wrote in a text message to a New York Times reporter. “Jan. 6 will be four years old by the election. People have processed it, one way or another. Biden needs fresh material, a new attack, rather than kicking a dead political horse.”Mr. Biden and his campaign have often sought to remind voters of the violence of Jan. 6, 2021. Jason Andrew for The New York TimesDemocrats have found that while ideas of democracy can motivate the party’s most engaged voters, it can be more of a struggle to connect lofty ideals to voters who are more focused on economic issues like high prices and interest rates. In the 2022 midterm elections, months after the fall of Roe v. Wade, far more Democratic candidates made abortion rights central to their messaging as opposed to threats to democracy.Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University who convened planning sessions in 2020 to prepare for ways the Trump administration could disrupt that year’s election, said she was worried that “we’re in the nothing-matters phase of American politics.” Mr. Trump’s supporters, she lamented, become only more loyal each time he does something that in a previous era would have been instantly disqualifying.“It’s not clear to me that anything Biden does could fundamentally change any of that,” Ms. Brooks said. “So I’m actually quite depressed.”The Democratic governor of the state Mr. Biden was visiting, Josh Shapiro, who won office in 2022 against an election denier who chartered buses to Washington on Jan. 6, said before Mr. Biden’s speech that the key for the president and fellow Democrats would be connecting the idea of democracy with bread-and-butter issues like health care and the economy. A return to power by Mr. Trump, he said, would “create chaos” across a spectrum of issues that would affect people.“He brought real chaos to this country, and we should not allow that to come back,” Mr. Shapiro said.Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was more succinct. “I see ’24 as good versus evil,” he said.Mr. Biden threaded his speech with warnings that Mr. Trump and Republicans would threaten not only democracy but also major Democratic priorities — abortion rights, voting rights and economic and environmental justice.Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonprofit dedicated to combating authoritarianism, said he had stressed to Mr. Biden’s aides that the president needed to connect democracy to voters’ personal experiences on other issues, in the same way Mr. Trump repeats to his supporters that prosecutions of him are persecutions of them.“Democracy is not just a way of structuring elections for order in our government,” Mr. Bassin said. “It’s a set of values about the kind of communities we want to live in and the way that we want to live as neighbors.”Mr. Biden warned in his speech that Mr. Trump was not being shy about what he would do in a second term.“Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past. It’s what he’s promising for the future,” Mr. Biden said. “He’s not hiding the ball.”Mr. Biden then recounted, in exacting detail, how a Trump campaign rally last year began with a choir of rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 singing the national anthem while a video of the damage played on a big screen. Mr. Trump had watched with approval.The scene, Mr. Biden suggested, would be the nation’s fate if Mr. Trump and his allies returned to power.“This is like something out of a fairy tale,” Mr. Biden said. “A bad fairy tale.”Kellen Browning More

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      Three Years After Jan. 6, Trump’s Immunity Claims to Take Center Stage

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      An appeals court will hear arguments on Tuesday over the former president’s attempt to shut down the federal election case. Much is riding on how — and how quickly — the issue is decided.Three years after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol, former President Donald J. Trump will make his latest and potentially most consequential argument in the coming week for why he should not be held responsible for seeking to overturn the 2020 election.Impeachment proceedings, the House Jan. 6 committee’s inquiry and two separate criminal investigations have established a comprehensive set of facts about Mr. Trump’s deep involvement in overlapping efforts to remain in office despite having been defeated at the polls.But when — or even whether — he will ultimately face a trial on charges related to those efforts remains unclear. One of the most decisive factors in getting an answer to those questions will be the success or failure of the arguments his legal team plans to make on Tuesday in a federal appeals court in Washington.Mr. Trump’s lawyers are banking on a long shot, hoping to convince a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the Constitution affords him complete immunity from actions he undertook as president. The assertion, while untested in the courts, has the advantage to the former president of chewing up time in the service of his strategy of trying to delay any trial until after Election Day.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Harry Dunn, Who Defended Capitol on Jan. 6, Will Run for Congress

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      Harry Dunn, who endured racist slurs as he fought off a pro-Trump mob and gained fame with his emotional testimony before the Jan. 6 committee, is joining a crowded Democratic primary.Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer who rose to prominence for his defense of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and for his emotional public testimony describing the attack, announced on Friday that he was running for Congress in Maryland’s third district.“On Jan. 6, 2021, I did my duty as a police officer and as an American and defended our nation’s Capitol from violent insurrectionists,” Mr. Dunn said in a statement. “Today, I’m running for Congress because the forces that spurred that violent attack are still at work, and as a patriotic American, it is my duty to defend our democracy.”Mr. Dunn, 40, will enter a crowded Democratic primary field to replace Representative John Sarbanes, the retiring 17-year incumbent. Five state lawmakers have already announced their campaigns to represent the central Maryland district, which snakes between Washington and Baltimore. Whoever emerges from the primary in the overwhelmingly Democratic district is almost certain to win the general election.Mr. Dunn, a member of the Capitol Police for 15 years, was one of four officers who testified at the first public hearing of the House committee that investigated the attack by the pro-Trump mob on the Capitol, where lawmakers had gathered to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. He described how fellow officers bloodied in the battle and how rioters used racist slurs against him.“I sat down on a bench with a friend of mine who is also a Black Capitol Police officer and told him about the racial slurs I had endured,” Mr. Dunn recalled during a memorable portion of the testimony. He added that he “became very emotional,” asking how such a thing could happen and yelling, “‘Is this America?’”“I began sobbing, and officers came over to console me,” he said.In 2023, President Biden awarded Mr. Dunn the Presidential Citizens Medal in recognition for his role in protecting the Capitol.Mr. Dunn grew up in the Washington suburbs of Prince George’s County, Md., and graduated from James Madison University in Virginia, where he played football and helped lead the team to its first national title.He has written a book called “Standing My Ground.” More

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      Biden to Set Stakes for 2024 Election in Pennsylvania Speech

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      President Biden is returning to the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Friday to try to define the 2024 presidential election as an urgent and intensifying fight for American democracy.Mr. Biden is expected to use a location near the famous Revolutionary War encampment of Valley Forge and the looming anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to cast preserving democracy as a foundational issue to the 2024 campaign, according to a senior Biden aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the remarks.The address, which builds on previous speeches about safeguarding American institutions and combating political violence, represents a bet that many Americans remain shaken by the Jan. 6 attack and Donald J. Trump’s role in it.Leaning on a phrase used by America’s first president, George Washington, around the time he commanded troops at Valley Forge, Mr. Biden is expected to suggest that the 2024 election is a test of whether democracy is still a “sacred cause” in the nation, the aide said.Mr. Biden is fond of using sites of historical significance to underscore speeches that he and his team see as important moments. He traveled to Independence Hall in Philadelphia before the midterm elections and to Gettysburg, Pa., during the 2020 presidential campaign.His campaign views the events of Jan. 6 — when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a violent culmination of his election denialism — as critical to understanding how the 2024 campaign will unfold. His team notes that Mr. Trump and Republicans have tried to rewrite the history of that day but argues that images of the Capitol riot remain seared in the minds of voters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Should Trump Be on the Ballot? And Other 2024 Sticky Wickets

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      Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicIs Donald Trump an insurrectionist who should be barred from the ballot? On this episode of “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts discuss who should get to decide if the former president can try to return to the White House. Plus, the hosts lay out what other stories are on their 2024 political bingo cards.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Hill Street Studios/Getty ImagesMentioned in this episode:“The Antidemocratic Quest to Save Democracy From Trump,” by Ross Douthat in The New York TimesDecember 2023 Times/Siena poll“The 2023 High School Yearbook of American Politics,” by Michelle Cottle in The Times“Trump’s 2024 Playbook,” episode of “The Daily” from The Times“The World Should Fear 2024,” by Aris Roussinos in UnHerdThoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.Follow our hosts on X: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) and Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Phoebe Lett and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Alison Bruzek. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More