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      Pelosi faces pressure to seize reins in investigating US Capitol attack

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      Top Democrats are making a renewed effort to press ahead with establishing a sweeping, central investigation into the 6 January attack on the Capitol in what could be the final opportunity to hold former US president Donald Trump to account for inciting insurrection.The move reflects the resolve of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to pursue a comprehensive inquiry even without bipartisan support, after Senate Republicans, fearful of what a full accounting of the violence might uncover, last week voted down legislation for a 9/11-style commission to scrutinize the attack by a pro-Trump mob.Pelosi said on a Democratic caucus call on Tuesday that she was prepared to create a House select committee with subpoena power to replace the commission as the principal investigation by Congress into the assault, according to sources familiar with the matter.The select committee was one of several options raised on the call that included empowering one existing committee, such as the House homeland security committee, to take charge of the congressional investigation, the sources said.Also suggested on the call was the possibility of returning the bill to create a 9/11-style commission back to the Senate for a second vote, while Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic caucus chair, floated the idea of the Department of Justice appointing a special counsel.Pelosi did not endorse any particular proposal, but she did categorically rule out a presidential commission created by Joe Biden, in large part because such a panel would lack subpoena authority or funding without a statutory change.Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, was supportive of empowering the House homeland security committee to take charge, the sources said, while the House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, and the assistant speaker, Katherine Clark, were non-committal.It was not immediately clear how Pelosi might proceed. But rank-and-file House Democrats have agitated for weeks for Pelosi to seize the reins and adopt her longstanding fallback plan of empanelling a select committee.Select committees – among the top weapons for congressional oversight – have long been convened on issues relating to corruption and cover-up, from the investigation into presidential campaign activity during Watergate to the Benghazi terrorist attacks.The creation of a select committee could break the logjam that has persisted for months on Capitol Hill over disagreements between Democrats and Republicans over how to embark on a full accounting of the attack that left five dead and scores injured.Proponents of the select committee received a boost last week from Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, who seemingly extended his endorsement to the proposal saying it was “better to investigate with a select committee than not investigate”.Pelosi has previously suggested that a select committee would focus on lines of inquiry likely to have been explored by the commission.That kind of mandate would mean a forensic examination into the root causes of the attack, the former president’s conduct as his supporters stormed the Capitol and threatened to hang his own vice-president, as well as any potential ties between Trump and the rioters.But its work could still be stymied by Republicans, who have repeatedly resisted any comprehensive inquiry into the attack, afraid of being found complicit ahead of the 2022 midterm elections in inciting insurrection by amplifying Trump’s lies about voter fraud.The number of Republicans downplaying or even outright denying the reality of what transpired on 6 January, for instance, has only increased in recent months; Congressman Andrew Clyde described the deadly insurrection as a “normal tourist visit” to the Capitol.Likely opposition – especially from Republican leaders in Congress – could also make any new findings be viewed through a partisan lens and cause a substantial proportion of the country to reject any conclusions that cast Trump in a negative light.The last select committee convened by Congress to investigate Benghazi devolved into a partisan affair, even before the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, admitted it had been created to damage the 2016 election chances of the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.But House Democrats have remained largely undeterred. “If Republicans won’t join us to protect our democracy, we have an obligation to do it ourselves,” said Teresa Leger Fernández, a member of the House administration committee. More

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      Four more Oath Keepers indicted for participating in Capitol attack

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      Four additional members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group that took part in the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January, have been indicted for participating in the event.Court documents unsealed on Sunday named three individuals living in Florida – Joseph Hackett, 51, of Sarasota, Jason Dolan, 44, of Wellington, and William Isaacs, 21, of Kissimmee. The three appeared last Thursday before US magistrates in Tampa, West Palm Beach and Orlando. A fourth person’s name was hidden.The four new defendants are charged with conspiring to obstruct Congress’s confirmation of the 2020 presidential election results in a joint session of Congress that was interrupted by the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Five deaths were ultimately linked to the attack.The four Oath Keepers are each accused of forcing entry through the Capitol’s East Rotunda doors after marching up the steps wearing combat uniforms, tactical vests, helmets and Oath Keepers insignia.The new indictment is part of a larger criminal conspiracy case that now includes 19 members of the far-right group. Members previously charged in the government’s case have pleaded not guilty.According to prosecutors, members of the group attended a 9 November meeting during which the Oath Keeper’s founder Stewart Rhodes, referred to in government documents as Person One, described the attack as an insurrection.“We’re gonna be posted outside DC, awaiting the president’s orders. … We want him to declare an insurrection,” according to documents.Prosecutors say the Oath Keepers is a loose federation of militia groups that targets law enforcement and military members for recruitment and promotes a totalitarian vision of the government that its members believes represents a threat to American citizens.Rhodes, who has not been charged, has claimed that the government is trying to build the action of a few members into an alleged organizational conspiracy. “I may go to jail soon, not for anything I actually did, but for made-up crimes,” Rhodes told Texas Republicans in March, according to the Washington Post.The new indictment alleges that Rhodes began developing plans to keep Donald Trump in office by force six days after the presidential vote. During an online meeting on 9 November, prosecutors claim, he told some of the Oath Keepers now under indictment:We want [Trump] to declare an insurrection, and to call us up as the militia,” Rhodes allegedly stated. More

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      How Mitch McConnell killed the US Capitol attack commission

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      Days before the Senate voted down the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, was adamant: he would oppose the bill, regardless of any amendments – and he expected his colleagues to follow suit.The commission that would have likely found Donald Trump and some Republicans responsible for the insurrection posed an existential threat to the GOP ahead of the midterms, he said, and would complicate efforts to regain the majority in Congress.McConnell’s sharp warning at a closed-door meeting had the desired effect on Friday, when Senate Republicans largely opted to stick with the Senate minority leader. All but six of them voted to block the commission and prevent a full accounting into the events of 6 January.But it also underscored the alarm that gripped McConnell and Senate Republican leadership in the fraught political moments leading up to the vote, and how they exploited fears within the GOP of crossing a mercurial former president to galvanize opposition to the commission.The story of how Republicans undermined an inquiry into one of the darkest days for American democracy – five people died as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and sought to hang Mike Pence – is informed by eight House and Senate aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.The prospect of a commission unravelsSurrounded by shards of broken glass in the Capitol on the night of 6 January, and as House Democrats drew up draft articles of impeachment against Trump, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, made her first outreach to canvas the prospect of a commission to investigate the attack.In the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, Pelosi had reason to be hopeful. Spurred on by the threat felt by many Republicans to their personal safety, a swelling group of lawmakers had started to agitate for an inquiry to reveal how Trump did nothing to stop the riot.But what was once heralded as a necessary step to “investigate and report” on the attack and interference in election proceedings unravelled soon after, with the commission swiftly reduced to an acrimonious point of partisan contention in a deeply divided Capitol.The main objection from House and Senate Republicans, at first, centered on the lopsided structure of Pelosi’s initial proposal, that would have seen a majority of members appointed by Democrats, who would have also held unilateral subpoena power.And only weeks after the riot, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, was already advancing the complaint for his ultimate opposition: that the scope of the commission did not include unrelated far-left violence from last summer, a political priority that stalled talks.With little progress three months after the Capitol attack, Pelosi made a renewed effort to establish a commission on 16 April, floating a revised proposal that mirrored the original 9/11 commission with the panel evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.Pelosi briefed her leadership team that included the House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, the House majority whip, Jim Clyburn, the assistant speaker, Katherine Clark, and notably, the chair of the House homeland security committee, Bennie Thompson, about the proposal the following Monday.During that meeting, Hoyer first raised the prospect of also extending equal subpoena power to Republicans – a concession that would allow Democrats to meet all of Republicans’ demands about the structure of the commission – which Pelosi adopted a few days later.By the penultimate week of April, Pelosi had deputized Thompson to lead talks as she felt the homeland security committee was an appropriate venue, and because the top Republican on the committee, John Katko, was one of only three House GOP members to impeach Trump.With the House on recess, Thompson made enough progress in negotiations to brief Pelosi and her leadership team on 8 May that he secured a tentative deal on the commission, though Katko wanted to wait on an announcement until Liz Cheney was ousted as GOP conference chair.Tensions within the House Republican conference had reached new highs the previous week after Cheney continued her months-long criticism of Trump’s lies about a stolen election at a party retreat in Florida, and Katko was wary of injecting the commission into the charged moment.“As soon as the vote on Liz Cheney is taken, he will be prepared to do a joint statement,” Thompson said in remarks first reported by CNN.Minutes after House Republicans elevated Elise Stefanik to become the new GOP conference chair on 14 May, Thompson and Katko unveiled their proposal for a bipartisan 9/11-style commission.McConnell cracks down on the billThe ouster of Cheney solidified Tump’s outsize influence on the Republican party, and set the scene for the weeks to come.McCarthy almost immediately sought to distance himself from the commission and was non-committal about offering his endorsement. Asked whether he had signed off on the deal, McCarthy was direct: “No, no, no,” he told reporters in the basement of the Capitol.By the following Tuesday, top House Republicans were urging their colleagues to oppose the commission bill, with McCarthy positioned against an inquiry on the basis that its scope focused narrowly on the Capitol attack.As Hoyer had anticipated when he suggested that Pelosi also offer equal subpoena power to Republicans, McCarthy struggled to demonize the commission, and several House Republicans told the Guardian that they found his complaints about the scope unconvincing.The Senate minority leader, meanwhile, had until then denounced Trump, who he faulted for inciting the insurrection, and publicly seemed open to a commission. But as it became clear the scores of House Republicans would vote for the bill, his calculus quickly changed.Two days after the Senate returned for votes on 17 May McConnell informed Senate Republicans at a private breakfast event that he was opposed to the commission as envisioned by the House, and made clear that he would embark on a concerted campaign to sink the bill.Underpinning McConnell’s alarm was the fact that Democrats needed 10 Senate Republicans to vote in favor of the commission, and seven had already voted to impeach Trump during his second Senate trial – a far more controversial vote than supporting an inquiry into 6 January.Cognizant that Senate Democrats may find three or four more allies in uncertain Republicans, McConnell cracked down.After announcing at the breakfast event that he would oppose the commission, McConnell railed against the bill as being “slanted and unbalanced” on the Senate floor, in biting remarks that represented a clear warning as to his expectations.He kept up the pressure all afternoon on that Wednesday, so that by the evening, McConnell had a major victory when Senator Richard Burr, who voted to impeach Trump only four months before, abruptly reversed course to say that he would reject the commission.In the end, only six Senate Republicans – Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Bill Cassidy, Rob Portman, Lisa Murkowski and Ben Sasse – voted to move forward on the commission.As the final vote hurtled towards its expected finale, the Senate minority whip, John Thune, who also switched his position to side with McConnell, acknowledged McConnell’s arguments about a commission jeopardising Republican chances to retake majorities in the House and Senate.Summarising his concerns, Thune said: “Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 elections I think is a day lost on being able to draw a contrast between us and the Democrats’ very radical leftwing agenda.” More

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      ‘Democracy’s loss:’ 9/11 commission chief on Republican 6 January rejection

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      The head of the 9/11 Commission has told the Guardian senators’ failure to launch a similar investigation into the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol is “democracy’s loss”.Thomas Kean led a bipartisan team that held public hearings, studied classified intelligence, interviewed two presidents and chased down conspiracy theories in producing a 567-page report on the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.The former Republican governor of New Jersey argued for an equivalent commission to study the Capitol riot but that effort was thwarted on Friday when Senate Republicans used their first legislative filibuster of Joe Biden’s presidency, stopping Democrats obtaining the 60-vote majority needed to set up the panel.“It saddens me because there was no real public reason for turning it down,” Kean, 86, said by phone from Far Hills, New Jersey. “I guess some people were scared of what they’d find out. That’s not a good reason for turning it down.“I think if it’s done right, the methodology of the 9/11 Commission works and could have worked to find out all about this particular event. Why these people invaded the Capitol, who they were, who they were allied with. Was it a big conspiracy? Was there any plan to do anything in the future? Why wasn’t the Capitol better defended?”Kean added: “These are all questions we may never have the answer to. It’s time we found out about it and I’m sorry we’re not going to. It’s a mistake and it’s a country’s loss and a democracy’s loss.”Kean was appointed chairman of the 9/11 Commission by George W Bush. Most of its recommendations were implemented by Congress, including the need for greater intelligence sharing between agencies, under a single national director.Kean believes the commission’s work, including cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, offered a valuable blueprint.“I think when you find something that works,” he said, “it’s not a bad thing to replicate it. There are lots of things that don’t work and haven’t worked – they shouldn’t be replicated – but this is one that did work.“We told the history of the 9/11 attacks, which is now used as a college textbook, and nobody’s really contradicted any of the major facts in it.“We made 41 recommendations, most of which were enacted by the Congress. We had the largest reorganisation of government in years and the bottom line is there hasn’t been anything like that attack since. The structure we set up seems to work.”Kean also supports efforts to create a Covid-19 commission to learn lessons from America’s mishandling of the pandemic. But he suspects it might eventually be done by the private sector rather than government.Some commentators have described 6 January 2021 as America’s darkest day since 11 September 2001. The nation was stunned when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to disrupt the certification of Biden as winner of the presidential election. Five people died.Democrats pushed for a commission that would scrutinise law enforcement decisions on the day, intelligence and security planning failures and the response of the Pentagon, along with Trump’s role before and during the chaos.In a speech near the White House on 6 January, Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” in support of his lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud. He was impeached on a charge of inciting an insurrection but was acquitted when only seven Republican senators voted for his guilt.Legislation to create the commission passed the House with 35 Republican supporters but on Friday only six Republican senators voted in favour. Five of the six also voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial. The outcome of the attempt to establish the 6 January commission immediately fuelled criticism that the Republican party has put fealty to Trump ahead of healing democracy. More

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      Republicans are trying to rewrite the history of the Capitol attack. Don’t let them | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      Do you remember how, just a few short months ago, supporters of Donald Trump staged a violent insurrection? How they stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of last November’s presidential election, looting and vandalizing the seat of American democracy? The fact that they carried firearms, explosives and handcuffs, some wanting to kill Vice-President Mike Pence, and others to run the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, over with a car? And how the whole thing was incited by the former president, Donald Trump, who told the mob beforehand to “fight like hell”?If you are willing to admit that you remember these things, you’re in a smaller minority than you might think. In recent months, Republicans haven’t been content to just block the creation of a congressional committee to uncover new facts about the insurrection. They’ve also moved to rewrite the history of the facts we already know. Republican legislators and rightwing media have suggested either that nothing of particular note happened that day, or that if it did, it was the fault of leftwing agitators like “antifa” and Black Lives Matter. Completely unmoored from reality as they may be, Republican voters seem about split between the two explanations, with 48% saying that the people at the Capitol were “mostly peaceful, law-abiding Americans” and 54% saying they were a leftwing mob.Often lies like this are designed to obscure what the party itself does. As Republicans have moved more and more overtly towards rejecting the democratic process, they have to try all the more furiously to cover up their tracks. If the party were forced to admit that the man who they twice put forward to be president – and may yet put forward again – had instigated a violent insurrection, it would be hard for them to continue to function as a democratic political party. Rather than admit what they really are, they prefer to deny what they did.But the attempt by Republicans to rewrite history extends beyond lying about their own behavior. Like pathological liars everywhere, Republicans spin vast, conspiratorial stories in which they always emerge as either the hero or the victim. Ridiculous claims that the election was stolen or that coronavirus was a minor event which the media overhyped to harm Trump are intended to recast the story of America’s recent history in a way which legitimizes the party’s ceaseless war against expertise, fact-based media and political opposition.The inability to reach a shared understanding of recent history poses a grave dangerWhat makes Republican lies so insidious is that they have many purposes beyond being literally believed. As Russel Muirhead and Nancy L Rosenblum have argued, they are often “conspiracy without the theory”. No evidence or explanation in support of them is offered because factual belief is not the point. Instead, they serve to have believers demonstrate their loyalty. To repeat something clearly untrue is a sign of debasement but also dedication, one that reaffirms one’s identity as a loyal member of the movement. The lies also draw a clear line between believers on the inside and those on the outside who react furiously to the blatant falsehoods. This only intensifies the perception among Republicans that they are under relentless siege from hostile forces, making the lies even easier to repeat.The inability to reach a shared understanding of recent history poses a grave danger. While political parties and factions will always disagree over how to interpret the world and its history, the give-and-take and trust which are vital to the functioning of democratic politics depend on a common baseline understanding of reality. Decades ago, the political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote that factual truth is “the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us”, by which she meant that it sets the parameters and limits of political struggle. If one side refuses to accept those limits, it is signaling that it is capable of doing almost anything to gain the power necessary remake the world in the shadow of their lies.Another of Arendt’s observations was that once a common understanding of the world has been lost, it is incredibly difficult to reconstruct. The sheer scale of the apparatus which works to rewrite history – from TV and radio to social media posts to online propaganda outlets – creates a snug cocoon of validation which is hard to penetrate, especially when it is shared with others. Psychologists have demonstrated that human beings are hard-wired to dismiss information that contradicts their worldview and threatens their social relationships. If everyone else in your circle – at home, at the bar, on social media – is accepting the historical rewrite, the easiest thing to do is go along with it. Failing to do so could mean losing friends, falling out with family and questioning the fundamentals of your own identity.All of these forces create powerful incentives which will remain in place for as long as the party remains committed to its assault on American democracy. It has been said that truth is the first casualty of war, but it is also the first victim of would-be autocrats and revolutionaries. Today’s Republican party has plenty of both. For as long as it and its supporters continue to travel down their current path, they will remain dependent on the constant rewriting of history. There’s no other way for them to keep going. As for where exactly they’re going – that’s a question which ought to worry us all. More

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      Republicans’ blocking of the Capitol commission shows how deep the rot is

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      The question now is not so much whether the Republican party can be saved any time in the foreseeable future. It is what Joe Biden and the Democrats should do when faced with a party determined to subvert democracy through any means necessary, including violence.On Friday Republicans in the Senate torpedoed an effort to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the deadly insurrection by Donald Trump’s supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January, deploying the procedural move known as the filibuster to stop it even being debated.Fearful perhaps of what such a commission might uncover about their own role as co-conspirators, most brushed aside personal pleas by Gladys Sicknick, the mother of a police officer who was that day sprayed with a chemical, collapsed and later had a stroke and died.“A country that cannot even agree to investigate an assault on its Capitol is in big trouble, indeed,” observed Susan Glasser in the New Yorker magazine.Tellingly Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who previously condemned Trump’s role in the riot, reportedly asked senators to nix the commission as a “personal favour”. It was a sign that the rot now goes deeper than a cult of personality into the foundations of the Grand Old Party (GOP).It is a party that still has room for Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman under investigation over sex trafficking allegations, who this week appeared to incite supporters to take up arms. “We have a second amendment in this country, and I think we have an obligation to use it,” he said.Gaetz was speaking in Georgia on his “America First” tour alongside local congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently compared coronavirus mask mandates to the Holocaust. The pair of mini-Trumps are taking his playbook of attention-grabbing outrage to new extremes.Bill Kristol, director of the Defending Democracy Together advocacy organisation, tweeted on Friday morning: “Marjorie Taylor Greene bragged yesterday that she and Matt Gaetz are taking over the GOP. Today Senate Republicans are set to block a January 6th commission that could make that somewhat more difficult. Violence and authoritarianism has enablers as well as instigators.”One of America’s two major parties now falls outside the democratic mainstream – think “far right” in European terms. But are Democrats taking the existential threat sufficiently seriously or sleepwalking towards disaster in the next election cycle?Joe Manchin, a moderate senator from West Virginia, had said Republicans have “no excuse” to oppose the commission. Yet he also repeated his refusal to contemplate abolishing the filibuster, effectively giving Republicans carte blanche to block infrastructure spending, voting rights legislation, statehood for the District of Columbia and more.Minutes after Friday’s vote, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, seemed to get it, arguing that Republicans acted out of “out of fear or fealty” to Trump and made his false claim of a stolen election their official policy. “Trump’s big lie is now the defining principle of what was once the party of Lincoln,” Schumer said. “Republican state legislatures, seizing on the big lie, are conducting the greatest assault on voting rights since the beginning of Jim Crow.”But national voting rights legislation that would counter such steps is in deep trouble on Capitol Hill. Biden’s deadline for a police reform law named after George Floyd has come and gone due to Republican objections. His ambitious infrastructure investment is stalling as Republicans seek to shave billions off.Whatever the president’s head tells him, his heart has always favoured bipartisan compromise. He may also feel obliged to make a show of reaching across the aisle to satisfy moderates such as Manchin. Yet Democratic majorities are painfully narrow and each day brings the midterm elections closer.Fred Wellman, a military veteran who is executive director of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, tweeted: “We need to fight for our Republic. I don’t understand at all what the Democratic leadership is thinking. Stop fucking around. Stop letting McConnell walk all over you. For God’s sake act like you are the majority. We are all out here fighting. Where are you?”That question just became even more urgent and the case for abolishing the filibuster, passing Biden’s agenda and acknowledging that the Republican party has gone rogue just became stronger. More

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      Senate Republicans block creation of US Capitol attack commission

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      Senate Republicans have blocked the creation of a special commission to study the deadly 6 January attack on the Capitol, dashing hopes for a bipartisan panel amid a Republican push to put the violent insurrection by Donald Trump’s supporters behind them.Republicans killed the effort to set up a 9/11-style inquiry into the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob despite broad popular support for such an investigation and pleas from the family of a Capitol police officer who collapsed and died after the siege and other officers who battled the rioters.In a procedural vote in the Senate on Friday, six Republican senators broke ranks to back the commission, which was more than expected, but four fewer than the 10 needed to overcome a filibuster and for it to advance.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, condemned Republican colleagues for blocking a bipartisan commission. “Shame on the Republican party for trying to sweep the horrors of that day under the rug because they’re afraid of Donald Trump,” Schumer said in a Senate floor speech immediately after the vote.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, argued the vote on the commission bill brought “shame” to the Senate and would make the country less safe. She indicated that House committees, which are under Democratic leadership, would continue to investigate the attack. “Democrats will proceed to find the truth,” Pelosi said.The insurrection was the worst attack on the Capitol in 200 years and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s win over Trump.But the Republican party remains firmly in the grip of Trump who had made his opposition to the commission very clear. Observers believe that senior party figures do not want to anger the former president or his legion of supporters and may also fear what the commission might uncover in terms of links between some of the rioters and Republican lawmakers.Though the commission bill passed the House earlier this month with the support of almost three dozen Republicans, Republican senators said they believe the commission would eventually be used against them politically.Trump has called it a “Democrat trap”.While initially saying he was open to the idea of the commission, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, turned firmly against it in recent days. He has said he believes the panel’s investigation would be partisan despite the even split among party members. McConnell, who once said Trump was responsible for provoking the mob attack on the Capitol, said of Democrats: “They’d like to continue to litigate the former president, into the future.”The Republican opposition to the bipartisan panel has revived Democratic pressure to do away with the filibuster, a time-honored Senate tradition that requires a vote by 60 of the 100 senators to cut off debate and advance a bill.With the Senate evenly split 50-50, Democrats needed the support of 10 Republicans to move to the commission bill, because Republicans invoked the filibuster. The episode has sparked fresh debate over whether the time has come to change the rules and lower the threshold to 51 votes to take up legislation.On Friday, the Democrats only got 54 votes by the time the vote was gaveled out.Friday’s vote marked Senate Republicans’ first official use of the filibuster to defeat a bill, and Schumer said he hoped this was not the beginning of a trend of Republicans blocking “reasonable, commonsense legislation”.The six Republicans who voted for the commission to proceed were Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Rob Portman of Ohio.A spokesperson for the Republican senator Pat Toomey told HuffPost that he was not in Washington for the commission bill vote because of a family obligation However, the spokesperson said, Toomey would have voted in favor of starting debate on the bill.Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter: “If Senate Republicans can block an independent commission investigating a deadly armed attack on the Capitol because it might hurt their poll numbers with insurrectionists, then something is badly wrong with the Senate. We must get rid of the filibuster to protect our democracy.”The Republicans’ political arguments over the violent siege – which is still raw for many in the Capitol, almost five months later – have frustrated not only Democrats but also those who fought off the rioters.Michael Fanone, a Metropolitan police department officer who responded to the attack, said between meetings with Republican senators that a commission is “necessary for us to heal as a nation from the trauma that we all experienced that day”. Fanone has described being dragged down the Capitol steps by rioters who shocked him with a stun gun and beat him. “So I don’t understand why they would resist getting to the bottom of what happened that day and fully understanding how to prevent it. Just boggles my mind,” she said. Video of the rioting shows two men spraying Sicknick and another officer with a chemical, but the Washington medical examiner said he suffered a stroke and died from natural causes. More

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      First Thing | Senate Republicans set to block Capitol riot commission

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      Good morning.Senate Republicans are expected to stymie the Democrats’ efforts on Friday to set up a bipartisan, 9/11-style investigative commission into the 6 January Capitol attack.Debate on legislation to form the commission was set to begin late on Thursday, but work on another bill pushed consideration to Friday after the Senate adjourned at 3am. Friday is set to be another long day, with the Republicans expected to filibuster the House-approved commission.
      If successful, “Filibuster Friday” will be the first filibuster in the Biden presidency to halt Senate legislative action, with the Senate evenly split 50-50 and a filibuster requiring a vote of 60 to cut off debate.
      Today’s vote comes as a Guardian analysis found that at least 70% of people charged over the 6 January attack had been released as they wait for trial, in stark contrast to the 25% of federal defendants who are typically released before their trial.
      Legal experts believe the disparity indicates a likelihood that many of the alleged rioters may not serve any prison time at all, even if they are convicted or plead guilty.
      US investigating if Ukraine interfered in 2020 electionFederal prosecutors in New York are investigating whether Ukrainian officials attempted to undermine Joe Biden and help Donald Trump win the 2020 presidential election, according to a report from the New York Times.Part of the investigation includes looking into whether the officials used Rudy Giuliani, then Trump’s personal lawyer, to spread misleading claims about Biden.Arizona preparing to start killing death row inmates againArizona has “refurbished” its gas chamber after 22 years of disuse as the state prepares to restart executions.The move comes seven years after the botched lethal injection of Joseph Wood in 2014, and after the Guardian revealed last month that Arizona had spent $1.5m on a batch of pentobarbital, a sedative which it intends to use as its main lethal injection.10 dead in mass shooting in San Jose, CaliforniaMore details have emerged about the shooting at a San Jose rail yard this week that left 10 people dead, including the shooter.
      Authorities have identified the victims as bus and light rail operators, mechanics, linemen and an assistant superintendent: Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose Dejesus Hernandez III, 35; Timothy Michael Romo, 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63, and Lars Kepler Lane, 63. A ninth victim, Alex Ward Fritch, 49, was transported to a local hospital in critical condition and died on Wednesday evening, the coroner’s office said.
      The county sheriff has identified the shooter as a longtime maintenance worker at the facility. The shooter’s ex-wife said he had talked about killing people at work more than a decade ago.
      In other news…
      Three Washington state police officers charged in killing of Manuel Ellis: Moments before his death, the 33-year-old Black father of two called out: “I can’t breathe.” The charges filed against three Tacoma police officers mark the first time first time the state attorney general’s office has filed criminal charges against police officers for unlawful use of deadly force.
      California launches a $1.5m Covid vaccine lottery, becoming the latest state to incentivize people to get vaccinated with the country’s largest single prize draw.
      Whistleblower known to speak out about UFOs claims Pentagon tried to discredit him: Luis Elizondo, who headed the Pentagon’s now-defunct Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, lodged a complaint with the defense department’s inspector general alleging that his former agency threatened to tell people he was crazy.
      Vaccination rate patterns in Wisconsin reflect those nationwide in that they vary widely between rural and urban areas and political, religious and racial groups.
      The Biden administration is facing criticism for backing a Trump-era oil drilling project in Alaska.
      Texas Democratic lawmakers killed a transphobic bill intended for student athletes by stalling until it passed its deadline.
      Bill Cosby’s parole petition was denied after he refused therapy for sex offenders.
      Stat of the day: 89% of new tobacco smokers are addicted by the age of 25The number of smokers worldwide has reached an all-time high of 1.1 billion, with 8 million killed in 2019, according to a new study.Don’t miss this: a conversation about American colonialism and sovereigntyJacqueline Keeler, founder of the #notyourmascot hashtag that highlighted the way sports teams use Native American mascots to perpetuate racist caricatures, spoke to the Guardian about her new book, Standoff, which explores the differences between two recent attempts to assert sovereignty on American soil: the Bundy clan’s far-right interpretation of Oregon’s constitution, and the Standing Rock Sioux protest over the Dakota Access pipeline.Last Thing: A glass case of emotionAmazon was torn apart on the internet on Thursday after sharing a video of “AmaZen”, a booth installed in an Amazon warehouse for employees to go focus on their mental health. “I feel like liveable wages and working conditions are better than a mobile Despair Closet,” writer Talia Levin tweeted.Sign upSign up for the US morning briefingFirst Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.Get in TouchIf you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com More