Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Why Republican Voters Think Americans Have to Get Over Jan. 6

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      This article is the result of a focus group we held with Republican voters about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the health of American democracy. You can also read the article about our Democratic voter focus group on the same issues here. Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, expands on the takeaways from the focus groups and the intent behind them here in the Opinion Today newsletter.Former President Donald Trump may be popular in the Republican Party, but his conduct during the attack on the Capitol last Jan. 6 earned poor marks and stood out as a troubling memory during a discussion among eight G.O.P. voters in a Times Opinion focus group this week.This transcript of the discussion — part of a new series of Opinion focus groups exploring Americans’ views on issues facing the country — offers a more nuanced portrait of Republican voters and their concerns about American democracy than the typical image of the pro-Trump party base in lock step with the former president. The Times convened this focus group, as well as a separate focus group with Democrats, to pose the same questions in hopes of showing how different voters see the events of last year and where they disagree or overlap.Some of the Republicans said Mr. Trump could have stopped the attack on Jan. 6 sooner and others blamed him for egging on his supporters. At the same time, several of the Republicans repeated Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about election fraud and traded in other unfounded claims, including about the Jan. 6 riot, news coverage and a Democratic push for Covid-related restrictions to supposedly ensure more mail-in balloting in future elections.As is customary in focus groups, our role as moderators was not to argue with or fact-check the speakers. Listening to some of the Republicans rationalize their support for the president, and in some cases justify the mob violence at the Capitol, may offer insights into what makes them vote the way they do, and believe what they believe. It’s only by understanding that can we move toward a better, clearer understanding of our fellow citizens.Two veteran focus group moderators, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Margie Omero, led the Republican and Democratic discussions respectively. (Times Opinion paid them for the work; they do similar work for political candidates, parties and special interest groups.)This transcript has been edited for length; an audio recording and video clips of the session are also included. As is common with focus groups, the speakers’ last names are not included.Kristen Soltis Anderson: What are some of the biggest things that you remember happening in 2021?Gayle (from Florida): The vaccine. More and more people getting vaccinated.Judi (from Oklahoma): The economy started to go bad.Barney (from Delaware): The price of everything going up, and we’re back to $50 fill-ups.Matt (from Tennessee): Betty White was the final thing that 2021 was able to take from us.Lorna (from Missouri): A lot of the concerts were canceled. They managed to pull off the Rolling Stones coming here, though. I didn’t go. I didn’t want to be around all them people.Joshua (from Ohio): The social justice movement growing from 2020, definitely.Judi: The great divide our country is in. With our new president and with issues with the vaccine. There are people that are all for it. There are some that will not even talk about it or take it, even look at it.Sandy (from California): The vaccinations — you have to show your card. It’s almost like we’re having our civil rights taken away.Kristen Soltis Anderson: When I say “Jan. 6,” I want to hear from each of you what the first word is that comes to mind.Barney: Way overblown.Judi: Scary.Joshua: Misrepresented.Lorna: One of the guys that was arrested, my mom worked with. It’s ridiculous the way they came out and searched his house.Gayle: Definitely Trump and MAGA and CNN.Sandy: Blowing out of proportion.Kristen Soltis Anderson: In your own words, what happened on Jan. 6? How would you describe what happened?Matt: I would say civilians stormed the Capitol building in an unwarranted fashion.Gayle: Many people that were upset with how the election turned out and didn’t feel that Biden won fairly and wanted to, I guess, do some damage.Jill (from Maine): People trying to take control because they felt like somehow they were wronged with the election.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want you to think about how you felt when you first heard about what had happened on Jan. 6, how you felt. A show of hands, did anybody feel angry?[Matt and Jill raise their hands.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: What about upset?[Jill, Matt, Lorna, Judi and Barney raise their hands.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: What about ashamed?[No one raises a hand.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: Ambivalent?[Gayle raises her hand.]Gayle: I kind of feel like, on one hand, you had a few bad apples in there, and then you had other people who truly were just trying to express their feelings of the election, and they didn’t feel that the outcome was right. So I don’t know what the intent was initially.Republican Focus Group on Jan. 6 and DemocracyPatrick Healy: How important do you think Jan. 6 was in American history? Just thinking about other major events in American history, Sept. 11, Pearl Harbor.Jill: I think it’s very important, and it’s much different than the other Pearl Harbors and stuff because it was Americans turning on Americans. It wasn’t somebody else doing damage. It was us doing damage to ourselves.Sandy: It doesn’t really faze me. I mean, these Black Lives Matter people back in 2020 — that was the whole summer. You don’t hear anybody talking about that.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Barney, I believe when I was going around and asking people to give one word, I believe you said “overblown.” Where do you see something like Jan. 6 in the scope of American history?Barney: I’ve lived in Washington. And if you do like you’re supposed to do and get your permits and get security, there’s very peaceful demonstrations with millions of people, and nothing happens. And nobody listened to the warnings saying there’s people coming. So it’s not a Pearl Harbor. It’s not a 9/11. It’s Jan. 6, 2021, and it’s just another day. Every day, if you live in Washington, you turn on the news, you hear “Jan. 6” 100 times a day. And if you go out to Oklahoma, you don’t hear it. So it’s where you are and what you hearGayle: People don’t talk about it. The issues that we’re dealing with right now, it’s Covid and inflation and the supply chain issues. It doesn’t matter if you’re Democrat or Republican. So I don’t know if it’s something that might eventually be in history books.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Were there any things that anybody was saying or doing that made what happened on Jan. 6 more likely to occur the way it did?Judi: People were saying that the states wanted to recount the votes because they saw fraud.Jill: I would say Trump. Trump saying he lost the election, it was stolen from him, over and over and over again. And I think a lot of people were just getting very angry about it, feeling like the election was stolen.Joshua: Trump’s speeches and his Twitter.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to know if you think there’s anything that President Trump could have done or should have done to prevent the escalation and what happened on Jan. 6?Judi: I don’t think you should have had that rally with all the people, with all the protesters. I think he just got everybody more ticked off.Gayle: I think he could have stopped it earlier somehow. I remember watching it on TV and going, ‘What the hell is going on right now?’ And I was like, ‘Where is Trump during this?’ And that was the only thing that kind of came to mind in that moment, was Trump’s got to come in and do something about this. But he wasn’t, and that was a concern of mine.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Based on what you’ve heard and your impressions of President Trump, what do you think was going through his mind when he was seeing all of this on television?Barney: He wasn’t very happy. For sure. Because Trump’s people don’t act like that. A lot of these people were professional antagonists. I’ve lived in D.C. my whole life. They like to do it.Sandy: People coming in there and storming and causing a ruckus didn’t achieve his goal.Judi: His followers were not like that.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to show you — this is a text from Donald Trump Jr. when he was texting with chief of staff Mark Meadows, where he said: “He’s got to condemn this ASAP. Capitol Police tweet is not enough.” Laura Ingraham: “Mark, the president needs to tell the people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He’s destroying his legacy.” Sean Hannity texting about this as well. Does this surprise you at all or not so much?Gayle: That is very surprising to me because they’re saying what you would think almost a Democrat would say or a liberal would say.Lorna: Kind of shocking to me. You’d think they’d back the president.Kristen Soltis Anderson: How do you think Vice President Mike Pence handled everything on Jan. 6? Is there anything that you wish the vice president had said or done differently that day?Sandy: I think he could have postponed the verification of the votes. To this day, there’s still recounts going on.Judi: No, I think he was stuck in the middle. I think he didn’t want to make waves, and I think he really didn’t have a choice.Gayle: He was stuck. I’m sort of stuck, myself, in thinking maybe he could have done more. But I don’t know what else he could have done other than to back Trump up.Patrick Healy: A show-of-hands question: How many of you believe Joe Biden won the election fair and square?[Jill raises her hand.]Patrick Healy: And how many of you believe Trump really won the election?[All but Jill and Matt raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Judi, you made a point at the beginning about your concern about the great political divide in the country. Do you think that Jan. 6 contributed to that political divide, or do you think other factors contribute to that divide?Judi: I think it has a lot to do with the divide. Because there’s people like us. We feel that Trump should have won. Trump won the election. And there are others that will say no, Biden won fair and square. And that’s what’s dividing this country between the Republicans and the Democrats. I mean, even more so. I mean, really, really dividing us.Gayle: I think the country has been divided especially since Trump went into office in 2016. It didn’t matter about his policies anymore. It just had to do with his personality that people hated so much. I never heard of it in such an extreme manner than I did — until 2016 — throughout his presidency. And I’ll be quite frank with you. I don’t think he should run again. It’s a mistake for him to run. If he runs, every Democrat is going to just vote Democrat just to not keep Trump in.Patrick Healy: Can I ask for a show of hands: How many of you would like to see President Trump run again in 2024?[Judi, Joshua and Lorna raise their hands.]Joshua: Under Trump, for most of his term — having our economy be great. Getting back to that.Patrick Healy: Barney, could I ask you why you didn’t raise your hand?Barney: His show’s over. We definitely need some new blood at the head of the country and different types of leaders. I mean, this divide among the parties is getting really crazy, crazy. And living where I do, I mean, it’s just every day. And I used to think it was really bad when George Bush II was president. I mean, no matter what he did, he got criticized. If you got a flat tire, it was Bush’s fault. Trump, no matter what, he couldn’t do anything. The Washington Post food critic, because [Trump] likes his steak well done, criticized him for that. What he likes.Patrick Healy: How many of you voted for President Trump in 2020?[Six raise their hands; Joshua and Jill do not.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: In the days that followed Jan. 6, a number of prominent Republicans came out and said they were upset with what had happened and that they were upset with the way Trump had handled the situation. You had Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy say, “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” You had some members of the White House staff and some members of President Trump’s cabinet who resigned in protest. Why do you think they came out and said that?Matt: Absolutely save face with their constituency.Judi: I don’t think they were honest, and I think they should have backed him regardless. I mean, you’re Republican or Democrat. You should back your president, and they didn’t. They didn’t back him. And that’s why I’m kind of — I’m going independent now.Barney: Politicians don’t do anything unless it’s for their own best interests. They don’t do it for you or me. They do it for them. So they’re always covering their butt all the time.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I think, Barney, you may have mentioned people coming in from other places. Who is antifa? Where are they coming in from, in your view?Barney: I think there’s groups around the country that just — they’re professional hell-raisers, and they like to poke the bear. And they’re funded by, maybe, other countries. I’m not sure. I don’t know. Or maybe by Soros. But they’re always there, and they’re always in front.Gayle: From what I understand, a lot of them are on college campuses, and they recruit that way. So they’re recruiting young folks, people that are new to — are very open-minded, and maybe they’re just looking for some sort of community, some sort of group that they can be a part of.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to take a step back. How would you characterize the health of our democracy? Healthy? Fair? Poor? Critical condition? I want to get a show of hands. How many of you think our democracy is “mostly healthy”?[Sandy raises his hand.]Sandy: Shake it off. Things happen in life. Quit being a wuss.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Any hands for “fair” condition?[Barney and Jill raise their hands.]Barney: You can make a lot of things happen, if you have the right influence and the right amount of cash. I don’t think it’s good, but the way our country was set up is not like it is today. We’ve gone way, way, away from that.Jill: I think the basic theme is still there. I think people are still good, whether Republican or Democrat, and they’re still looking to work towards the good. They want to make things better.Kristen Soltis Anderson: How many of you would say you think our democracy is in “poor” condition?[Five raise their hands.]Gayle: We still have rules and laws that we have to abide by. However, we do have freedom of speech, although sometimes I don’t know about that anymore.Judi: So far.Gayle: So far. Who knows? It’s more about the mandates and the lockdowns and these requirements that the federal government is now making us do, as opposed to giving more of that freedom back to the people or to the states. To me, democracy was based on having the constituents make decisions. It’s not about the federal government taking over and controlling everything. That’s why you see a lot of people now leaving their jobs, because they don’t want to get the vaccine, and yet they’re mandated to do it. So it’s a problem. I’m very happy and very fortunate to be living in Florida, by the way, because I didn’t go through a lot of these mandates and lockdowns that were required.Joshua: I would say that the government looks for events like Covid-19 as ways to usher in the “New World Order” and just have everything be more socialist.Patrick Healy: I want to ask specifically about the next presidential election, the 2024 presidential election. Are you concerned at all about the losing party, whether it’s Republicans or Democrats, trying to steal the election after the fact?Barney: I think every election from now on is going to be like that.Lorna: They’re already talking about the mail-in ballots with Covid. You know where that’s going to go.Sandy: Yeah. It’s like they’re coming up with these — the right to vote thing. I’ve never been turned down to vote. Just show up and go vote. But this whole mail-in ballot thing? I think that should end right away.Gayle: I’ll be quite frank: I think that the reason that they push Covid so much is because they’re going to try to keep the mail-in ballots. I think that they are putting the fear in people so that they can push Covid as long as possible for 2024. It’s all about control, and they’re keeping Covid as one of their biggest weapons.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I have one final question. It’s probably the case that 100 years from now a historian is going to be writing a book about the 2020 election, and they’ll have a chapter on Jan. 6 and what happened. What would you want those historians, 100 years from now, to know about how you think about Jan. 6?Matt: They would hopefully write that the process still stood strong. It did what it was supposed to do. Regardless of whether or not it was tested — the process was still the process, and it didn’t need to be rewritten because of some hurt feelings.Joshua: About how the news was just trying to get out the story as fast as they could have and not worrying about the facts, just changing everything as they went on.Barney: I hope they include both sides of the story and all the players involved.Lorna: How the Democrats invaded the White House.Gayle: I guess it would come down to what is a fair election. People just didn’t feel that the election was fair. What is the proper way to vote, I think, is really what I would say to write about.Jill: It started off to be people expressing their opinion in a peaceful way, got out of hand, turned into a little bit of mob mentality, and things just got out of control in a way that normally wouldn’t happen.Sandy: Yeah. It was no Boston Tea Party, so I don’t think it’ll be a big event in a history book. But people stood up for what they thought. More

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

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

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      On Jan. 6 Anniversary, Biden Goes After Trump and Trumpism

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      In a speech marking the anniversary of the Capitol riot, the president confronted Trumpism, even as he refused to utter his predecessor’s name.WASHINGTON — For most of his first year in office, President Biden has bet that he could move the country past the divisiveness of his predecessor by restoring a sense of normalcy to the White House, practicing the traditional brand of politics he learned over decades in the Senate and as vice president — and largely ignoring the man he refers to as “the former guy.”It didn’t work.So on Thursday, Mr. Biden put aside his hopes of no longer having to engage directly with Donald J. Trump and went aggressively at him, using an impassioned speech in the Capitol to make clear the urgent necessity of confronting Mr. Trump — and Trumpism.“We saw it with our own eyes. Rioters menaced these halls, threatening the life of the speaker of the house, literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America,” Mr. Biden said from National Statuary Hall.“What did we not see?” he continued. “We didn’t see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, the nation’s capitol under siege.”Later, Mr. Biden was even more blunt, even as he refused to utter Mr. Trump’s name. “He was just looking for an excuse, a pretext, to cover for the truth,” he said of Mr. Trump’s lies about election fraud. “He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president.”The extraordinary moment, in which a sitting president accused his predecessor of holding “a dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy,” marked a sharp pivot in Mr. Biden’s strategy for dealing with Mr. Trump and his continuing promotion of the baseless assertion that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.The president’s speech tacitly acknowledged that his predecessor, far from fading away, remains the most potent force in Republican politics and a credible rival to Mr. Biden in 2024. And for Mr. Biden, who throughout the last year has articulated the importance of promoting democracy over autocracy around the world, it also signaled his willingness to confront more directly the challenges Mr. Trump poses to democratic values at home, which have shown little sign of dissipating in the year since a violent mob tried to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s election victory.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?The approach has its risks, not least in providing Mr. Trump with better opportunities to hit Mr. Biden with broadsides of his own — an opening that Mr. Trump seized on Thursday with a series of angry statements accusing the president of supporting “open borders,” “unconstitutional mandates” and “corrupt elections.”But continuing to ignore his predecessor carries real peril for Mr. Biden as well. Recent polling suggests that millions of Americans are at least somewhat willing to tolerate or support political violence against partisan opponents.Republican-controlled states are considering or enacting restrictions on voting rights. Supporters of Mr. Trump are seeking to control the machinery of elections in key states, potentially giving them the power to block an outcome they oppose. Substantial majorities of Republicans in polls say they believe the results of the 2020 election were illegitimate.Mr. Trump’s influence over the Republican Party remains strong — he is trying to be its de facto kingmaker and he is polling as its front-runner for the 2024 presidential election. His false statements on election fraud continue to divide Americans. Last month, the two presidents shared a rare occurrence: commending each other. In an effort to address vaccine hesitancy among many Trump supporters — unvaccinated Americans are disproportionally Republican — Mr. Biden praised the previous administration’s work on coronavirus vaccines, prompting Mr. Trump to express gratitude.Since his inauguration, Mr. Biden has repeatedly condemned the violent assault on the Capitol and has even criticized Mr. Trump by name on a few occasions. Yet before Thursday, he had never as president taken such a direct, aggressive tone against Mr. Trump and his falsehoods, or the Republicans who have enabled him.“He values power over principle,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump. “Because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interest, and America’s interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution.”Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist, said returning to a contentious tit-for-tat would only alienate Trump supporters the administration was hoping to vaccinate.“We can save millions of lives globally, but when we tear each other apart like we did on Jan. 6, the damage can be irreparable,” Mr. Luntz said.Since his inauguration, Mr. Biden has repeatedly condemned the violent assault on the Capitol but had not taken such a direct, aggressive tone against Mr. Trump and his falsehoods before Thursday.Al Drago for The New York TimesIt was not clear whether Mr. Biden’s willingness to take on Mr. Trump so directly signaled a lasting shift in messaging or a one-off driven by the exigencies of the anniversary. Mr. Biden was described as deeply involved in the preparation of the speech and determined to make sure that it took on not just the mob but the former president who inspired it.At the same time, however, Mr. Biden wanted to avoid signaling that he had given up on bipartisanship altogether and gave himself a rhetorical escape hatch by including a line declaring that he “will always seek to work together” with those Republicans “who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man.”Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      4 Takeaways From the Jan. 6 Capitol Attack Commemoration

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

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

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

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      Jamie Raskin’s Year of Tragedy and Trump

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      We spoke to the Maryland congressman about losing his son just before Jan. 6 last year and his new book on American democracy.Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the political news in Washington and across the nation. We’re your hosts, Blake and Leah. ‘Unthinkable’ twin traumasOn the morning of Dec. 31, 2020, Representative Jamie Raskin went down to his basement and found his son Tommy, 25, lying dead on the bed where he had been sleeping while staying with his parents. He had committed suicide after a long struggle with depression.Raskin was shattered. He and his son had been uncommonly close, sharing a passion for legal arcana and late-night Boggle games and an unyielding liberal idealism.One week after Tommy’s suicide, a violent mob burst into the Capitol, forcing Raskin, a lawmaker from Maryland, to seek shelter in a congressional hearing room. His youngest daughter, 23-year-old Tabitha — who had come to Washington to look after her traumatized father — barricaded herself in another member’s office.Six days after that, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked Raskin to lead the second impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump.He immediately said yes.“I had no choice,” Raskin said in an interview at his home in Takoma Park, Md., a proudly progressive enclave just outside Washington. “I felt it was necessary, and Tommy was with me every step along the way.”Raskin choked up at this point, bowing his head on folded hands.“Pelosi’s got some magical powers,” he went on, after collecting himself. “That was a very low moment for me. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating. And I wasn’t sure if I would ever really be able to do anything again. And by asking me to be the lead impeachment manager, she was telling me that I was still needed.”A secret missionMonths earlier, Raskin reveals in “Unthinkable,” his wrenching new memoir, Pelosi had tapped him for a special assignment: to think like Trump.Two men could hardly have been more different: Raskin, an earnest constitutional law scholar who keeps a vegan diet; and Trump, a showman with a cynical disregard for legal niceties and a preference for well-done steak.As early as May 2020, Pelosi had begun to worry that Trump would try to win a second term as president by any means — even if he lost at the ballot box.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?She confided in Raskin, who had long been obsessed with the Electoral College system, which he thought was full of “booby traps” that someone like Trump could exploit.So when Pelosi asked him to game out what Trump might do in November, Raskin undertook the task with characteristic vigor. Over the next few months, he tried to piece together the Trump team’s likely strategy.“We all had become great students of Donald Trump and his psyche,” Raskin recalled. “I just figured out what they would do if they wanted to win.”Raskin summed up his findings a few months later in a memo to Pelosi’s leadership team.“Everything he ended up doing we essentially predicted, other than unleashing the violent insurrection against us,” Raskin said. “I fault myself for not having taken seriously the possibility of the outdoors violence entering into the chamber.”When investigators later unearthed a proposed six-step plan by John Eastman, a fringe conservative scholar who advised Trump on his Jan. 6 gambit, Raskin found it eerily similar to his own thinking.“It was not as good as my memo. I would have done a better job,” Raskin said, allowing himself a sly smile. “It was a shoddy, superficial product, but it was as I predicted.”Some colleagues, Raskin said, suggested he was overthinking the prospect for Republican misdeeds, saying, “There’s the constitutional law professor again, you know, lost in the nooks and crannies of the Constitution.”12th Amendment arcanaAs Raskin delved deeper, he realized that Democrats were vulnerable to one potential Trump move in particular: the triggering of a “contingent election” in the House of Representatives.Under the 12th Amendment, if no candidate musters a majority of the Electoral College to Congress on the appointed day, the House must immediately vote to choose the new president. But there’s a catch. Instead of a simple majority of House lawmakers, a majority of House delegations picks the winner. All the representatives from each state vote on that state’s choice for president, and then each state casts one vote.That put Democrats at a disadvantage, because before the 2020 election, Republicans controlled 26 states to Democrats’ 22 (two others were tied). But if Democrats could flip at least one Republican-held delegation, they would deny the G.O.P. a majority.So Raskin sought to change the balance of power via the upcoming election. First, he identified nearly two dozen Democratic candidates who would be crucial to either defending or flipping House delegations. Then, he steered money toward them through a group he named “Twelfth Amendment Defenders Fund.”Back then, educating donors about such a hypothetical scenario proved to be quite an endeavor. “I had to engage in a mini-constitutional seminar with everybody we were asking for money,” Raskin said.He ultimately raised nearly half a million dollars. Each of his candidates ended up getting around $20,000 from the fund — welcome help, but hardly a flood of cash.On Nov. 3, 2020, Republicans knocked off nearly a dozen House Democrats. They flipped the Iowa delegation after unseating Representative Abby Finkenauer, meaning the G.O.P. now had a 27-22 majority of state delegations even though Democrats still controlled the House as a whole. Another of Raskin’s Iowa candidates, Rita Hart, lost by just six votes.Now, if Raskin’s worst fears were realized and Trump engineered a contingent election in the House, President-elect Joe Biden would lose.Raskin believed that on Jan. 6, the fate of American democracy hinged on how Vice President Mike Pence understood his constitutional role. Would he simply pass along the results of the Electoral College, as his predecessors had all done? Or would he toss out the electoral votes of a few battleground states Trump had lost, throwing the election to the House?Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      Companies Donated Millions to Those Who Voted to Overturn Biden's Win

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      One year after the Capitol riot, many businesses resumed corporate donations to lawmakers who voted against certifying the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — At its annual summit on the state of American business last January, officials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce expressed disgust at the siege of the Capitol that had unfolded days earlier, and declared that lawmakers who discredited the 2020 election would no longer receive the organization’s financial backing.“There are some members who, by their actions, will have forfeited the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Period. Full stop,” Neil Bradley, the executive vice president and chief policy officer for the chamber, said at the time.Less than two months later, the nation’s biggest lobbying group reversed course. “We do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress solely based on their votes on the electoral certification,” Ashlee Rich Stephenson, the chamber’s senior political strategist, wrote in a memo.In the year since the riot at the Capitol, many corporate giants and trade groups have moved from making stern statements about the sanctity of democracy to reopening the financial spigot for lawmakers who undermined the election. Millions of dollars in donations continue to flow to what watchdog groups deride as the “Sedition Caucus,” highlighting how quickly political realities shift in Washington.A report published this week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog group, showed how corporate money continued to support most of the 147 lawmakers who voted to overturn the election results.In the last year, 717 companies and industry groups gave more than $18 million to 143 of those lawmakers. Businesses that pledged to stop or pause their donations to those lawmakers have since given nearly $2.4 million directly to their campaigns or leadership political action committees, according to CREW.Many of the corporations that have donated are household names, including Boeing, Pfizer, General Motors, Ford Motor, AT&T and UPS. Trade groups such as the Chamber of Commerce have also continued to be big donors, with such associations, or their political actions committees, giving $7.67 million to political groups associated with lawmakers who voted to overturn the election or to PACs that support them.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?To be sure, many companies have kept their word and maintained their pause on donations. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of leadership at the Yale School of Management, said his own research showed that a majority of corporations that pledged to slow or cease their PAC donations to election certification objectors had followed through with those promises.According to the CREW report, more than half of the nearly 250 companies that said they would evaluate their political giving after the attack have not made a donation to the lawmakers who tried to stop the certification of the election. Microsoft has held firm on its pledge to cease donations to those lawmakers, and Hewlett-Packard decided to shut down its PAC entirely after Jan. 6.But many companies have restarted campaign donations, with some saying they are doing so in the spirit of nonpartisanship.“Our employee PAC program continues to observe longstanding principles of nonpartisan political engagement in support of our business interests,” said Trent Perrotto, a spokesman for the defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which contributed $145,000 to 72 lawmakers who voted against certifying the election.Sharon J. Castillo, a Pfizer spokeswoman, said in a statement that “following the events of Jan. 6, 2021, the company adhered to its commitment to pause political giving to the 147 members of Congress who voted against certifying the election for six months.” She added that “monitoring elected officials’ conduct and statements is a part of our governance process, and we will continue to do so as we consider future Pfizer PAC disbursements.”CREW noted that some lawmakers who had downplayed the riot or sought to sow doubts about what happened on Jan. 6 had continued to be magnets for corporate money. Representative Madison Cawthorn, a North Carolina Republican who has blamed Democrats for instigating the violence and has called those taken into custody in connection with the riot “political hostages,” received $2,000 in donations from the National Association of Insurance & Financial Advisors and the Farmers’ Rice Cooperative Fund.Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican who has said there is no evidence that an “armed insurrection” took place, received $1,000 from the National Association of Insurance & Financial Advisors.In the immediate aftermath of the riot, associating with lawmakers who appeared to abet it was viewed by many companies as a political liability. But in many cases, those concerns did not last.Charles Spies, a Republican campaign finance lawyer who helped run Mitt Romney’s presidential super PAC, said that while the initial shock of the attack made corporate donors risk-averse, their thinking shifted with the politicization of the Jan. 6 congressional inquiry. Republicans have sought to downplay the attack and have accused Democrats of using the investigation to hurt the G.O.P.’s image.“It’s now a bit more politicized, which makes it harder for companies to just pick one side,” Mr. Spies said.As a House committee continues its inquiry into the Jan. 6 riot, many Republicans have argued that the investigation is politically motivated.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMelissa Miller, a Ford spokeswoman, justified the carmaker’s donations by explaining that they were not driven by a single issue.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      How the Capitol Riot Led to a Broken America

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      “Things feel broken.”Those weren’t the first three words in a recent article in The Times by Sarah Lyall about our pandemic-frazzled nerves. They weren’t the fanciest. But they seemed to me the truest — or, rather, the truth of our moment distilled to its essence. This country isn’t working, not the way it’s supposed to.Oh, it’s functioning, with a mammoth economy (which distributes wealth much too unevenly), an intricate transportation network (about to improve, thanks to infrastructure legislation) and the historically swift and heroically expansive delivery of vaccines to Americans rooted firmly enough in truth to accept them.But in terms of our democratic ideals? Our stated values? Our basic contentment?We’re a mess, and the pandemic mainly exposed and accelerated an ugliness already there. Would the violence at the U.S. Capitol a year ago today have happened in the absence of Covid closures and fears? Maybe not then. But we were headed there before the first cough.The anniversary of the Jan. 6 rioting has rightly focused attention on the intensifying efforts to undermine our democracy, but it should also prompt us to contemplate the degradation of the country’s civic spirit and the foulness of its mood.That’s part of what Jan. 6 symbolized, and that’s what Sarah’s article was about. It specifically examined customer freak-outs and meltdowns, but those bespeak a nastiness and selfishness that go hand in hand with disrespect for the institutions and traditions that have steadied us. The attacks on democracy are inextricable from the collapse of decency.In my final newsletter of 2021, I pushed back against many Americans’ pessimism, noting that when I look at spans of time greater than the past few months or years, I see trajectories of improvement, arcs of hope. I still see those, and I believe that we can — and should — leaven any upset over, say, the shortfall of Covid tests with bedazzlement at the fleet development of vaccines. As a country, as a species, we’ve still got plenty of juice.But it’s erratically channeled. It’s squandered. And it often can’t compete, not these days, with potent currents of anger. Regarding those currents, another passage in Sarah’s article grabbed and stayed with me. “In part, the problem is the disconnect between expectation and reality,” she wrote, paraphrasing what a consultant had told her.The consultant was addressing the consumer experience, but that assessment can be upsized and applied to the American experience. One of our glories as a country is how high we tell everyone to reach, how big we tell everyone to dream. But that’s also one of our predicaments. A land of promise will invariably be a land of promises unkept.There’s too little joy at present. In its stead: recrimination, rancor and indecency — which is the prompt for this reflection and the pivot to a plea. As we begin and lurch through a new year, can we recognize that the best way to fix what’s broken isn’t with a sledgehammer? The rioters at the Capitol lost sight of that. The rest of us mustn’t.For the Love of SentencesPanta PetrovicOliver Bunic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn part because of the holiday break, “For the Love of Sentences” hasn’t appeared since mid-December, so today’s installment will be a bit longer than usual, to accommodate nominations that stretch back that far. Without further ado:“When I read about the Serbian hermit Panta Petrovic this summer, I liked him immediately — even as I understood that he, being a misanthropic hermit, would not like me back,” wrote Jon Mooallem in The Times. “For starters, the man looked the part: 70 years old, smudgy-cheeked and virile, with a beard fanning off him like the bottom of an old broom, rope for a belt and white sleeves blousing from a tattered brown vest. Aesthetically, he resembled a fiddler on the roof without the fiddle. Or the roof.” (Thanks to Lynne Sheren of Greenville, N.Y., and Vipan Chandra of Attleboro, Mass., for the nomination.)Sticking with The Times, here’s Pete Wells, our restaurant critic, on a new British steakhouse in Manhattan: “One of Hawksmoor’s great attractions, though, is its custom of writing out the names and weights of other, larger cuts available that day on chalkboards posted around the dining room. These stretch from bring-your-rugby-teammates gigantic, like a 54-ounce rib chop, to condemned-prisoners’-last-meal huge, like a 38-ounce chateaubriand, on down to slabs of meat that you could conceivably eat by yourself if you could take the next day off to lie very quietly on the couch like a python.” (Christine Fischetti, Aspinwall, Pa.)Here’s the science writer Dennis Overbye on a special magnifying glass for the cosmos: “Sitting in a spaceport in French Guiana, wrapped like a butterfly in a chrysalis of technology, ambition, metal and wires, is the biggest, most powerful and, at $10 billion, most expensive telescope ever to be launched into space.” (Nina Koenigsberg, Manhattan)Here’s David Segal describing one of the people in his article about a Dickensian workhouse in London becoming — of course! — luxury apartments: “Mr. Burroughs, a 77-year-old chartered accountant, speaks carefully and barely above a whisper, as if he were narrating a golf tournament.” (Sharon Green, Owings Mills, Md.)Here’s Gail Collins, from her weekly online “Conversation” with Bret Stephens: “Registering as an independent is like telling a charitable fund-raiser that you want to help by sending good thoughts.” (Paula Diamond, Amagansett, N.Y.)Bret differed. “I’m happy as an independent,” he wrote. “It’s like getting to order à la carte, whereas everyone else is stuck with a bento box of things that don’t actually go together.” (David Calfee, Lake Forest, Ill.)Bret also confided, regarding 2021: “I had such high hopes for the year, Gail. Melania and Donald would slink quietly out of the White House, she in couture, he in ignominy.” (Christine Sheola, Ithaca, N.Y.)Moving on to The New Yorker: Calvin Trillin examined the art of the lede — that’s journalistic jargon for an article’s opening words — by reproducing an epically packed one from a Louisiana newspaper’s account of a woman biting a camel. (Yes, you read that correctly.) “Notice,” Trillin observed, “how the reader is drawn in with a single unpunctuated sentence that starts slowly and gradually becomes an express train that whistles right by the local stops without providing an opportunity to get off.” (Steve Estvanik, Seattle, and Laurie Caplan, Astoria, Ore., among others)Here’s Jenny Turner, in The London Review of Books, on Hannah Arendt: “She wrote polemical essay-columns, in German at first, for the German-speaking New York Jewish press, and then in the spirited, sardonic English of a beer-hall fiddler who hasn’t forgotten her old life in the string quartet.” (Roman Kadron, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.)In The Guardian, Catherine Bennett opined that despite all the damage that Covid has done, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, “has treated masks as if they were a lefty plot against his face.” (Marilyn Wilbanks, Ellensburg, Wash.)In The Washington Post, Dana Milbank sized up the current state of gerrymandering: “Thanks to a breathtaking abuse of redistricting in G.O.P.-controlled states, all but an unlucky handful of members of Congress will henceforth be exempt from listening to those god-awful whiners called ‘voters,’ spared those bothersome contests known as ‘elections’ and protected from other disagreeable requirements of ‘democracy.’” (Valerie Congdon, Waterford, Mich.)Finally, a headline — we allow the occasional extraordinary one into the “For the Love of Sentences” sanctum. It appeared atop a review of “The Tragedy of Macbeth” by A.O. Scott, one of The Times’s movie critics: “The Thane, Insane, Slays Mainly in Dunsinane.” (Bonnie Friedman, Pukalani, Hawaii, and Laura Day, Wheatland, Mo.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.What I’m Reading (and Have Written)Joan Didion in 1968.Julian Wasser/Time Life Pictures, via Getty ImagesJoan Didion’s death on Dec. 23 prompted many excellent appraisals of her work. One that particularly intrigued me was in The New Yorker, by Zadie Smith, who sagely noted and corrected many faulty assumptions about Didion. I wrote my own reflection on Didion’s early essays and how they pioneered a radical transparency in journalism. As it happens, I previously sang Didion’s praises, in this column from 2017.Another major loss: Betty White, at 99, last week. I got to spend a few hours with her a decade ago, for this feature. And here’s the audio from my 2011 interview with her onstage in Manhattan for the TimesTalks series.The conviction of Elizabeth Holmes on three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud prompts me to resurface this column of mine from 2019 about her dreams and schemes in the context of both American history and this particular American moment.Although this hilariously irreverent obituary of Renay Mandel Corren, written by her son Andy and published in The Fayetteville Observer in North Carolina, went viral, I mention it anew just in case you missed it and its assertion that there “will be much mourning in the many glamorous locales she went bankrupt in: McKeesport, Pa., Renay’s birthplace and where she first fell in love with ham, and atheism; Fayetteville and Kill Devil Hills, N.C., where Renay’s dreams, credit rating and marriage are all buried; and of course Miami, Fla., where Renay’s parents, uncles, aunts and eternal hopes of all Miami Dolphins fans everywhere are all buried pretty deep.” That’s pretty much the tone from start to finish. (Gail Lord, Santa Ana., Calif., and Priscilla Travis, Chester, Md., among others)Few political profiles have an opening as wild and memorable as Olivia Nuzzi’s take on Mehmet Oz in New York magazine does. The whole article is worth reading.So, in a different vein, is this beautifully written reflection by Honor Jones, in The Atlantic, on ending her marriage.Also in The Atlantic, James Parker’s appraisal of the new, nearly eight-hour documentary “The Beatles: Get Back” is a smorgasbord of spirited prose, which is par for the Parker course. (Kristin Lindgren, Merion Station, Pa.)Another keeper: Jon Caramanica, a Times pop music critic, eulogized his mother through his memories of going to concerts with her. “More than anyone, my mother — who died late last year — gave me music,” he wrote. “She gave me the idea that there was freedom, or identity, to be found within.” Jon added that nothing “will strip your varnish quite like watching someone you love wither. It made me tentative, as if any wrong move on my part might put her in peril.” (Paul Geoghegan, Whitestone, N.Y., and Ross Parker Simons, Pascagoula, Miss.)On a Personal NoteBarack Obama with his father.Obama For America via Associated PressIn a newsletter in early December, I mentioned that I’d begun reading, and was enjoying, the latest novel by Amor Towles, “The Lincoln Highway.” I didn’t finish it until last week: Deadlines, holiday commitments and more got in the way. Also, I wasn’t in a hurry. I wanted to make it last.Only in its final stretch did I fully appreciate one of its principal themes: the degree to which none of us can escape our parents.Oh, we can get away from them physically, if that’s what we very much want or need. But emotionally? Psychologically? For better or worse, I don’t think we’re ever free.I have friends who readily tick off the ways in which they’re unlike their mothers or fathers, as if to prove how little their parents have to do with them. But that cataloging — that consciousness — is the very evidence of their parents’ enduring presence, no less potent for them than for friends who dwell proudly on the values that their parents instilled in them. Whether attracted by their parents’ example or repelled by it, all of these daughters and sons are using the same point of reference. They’re measuring themselves with the same yardstick.I’ve been stuck by the especially pronounced stamp left by parents whose sons have reached most intently for the presidency or attained it. (I say “sons” because the sample set of daughters remains much, much smaller, though I hope not for long.) Those men’s relationships with their fathers, in particular, fascinate me.Look at the title of Barack Obama’s initial memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” Look at his predecessor George W. Bush, who tried so hard not only to match but also to exceed his father: He would get that second term; he would drive deep into Iraq, topple Saddam Hussein and remake the Middle East. Look at Bill Clinton, whose father died while his mother was still pregnant with him. What a hole that left. What a hunger that fed.I wrote at greater length about the paternal shadows cast on presidents in a column in 2014, so there’s no need for more of that now. Besides, those presidents are just amplified versions of most of the rest of us, who are destined to try to live up to or live down the people who produced us. To prove them right or wrong about us.Some of the unkind assessments that my parents made of me — throwaway remarks in most instances — are like inerasable chalk on the blackboard of my memory. But some of their more abundant expressions of faith also remain there, and if they’re fainter and smudged, well, that’s on me. All those words, all those judgments: They’re like the operating instructions for my personality. They explain how it works.And among the reasons that “The Lincoln Highway” moved me is how it brought all of that to the surface. For its main characters, the actions and inaction of parents aren’t just details from the past. They exist as gravity does — a grounding force, a constant pull. More